Fairies and Mermaids: A Grayscale Coloring Book
By: Molly Harrison
Rating: 5 of 5
I own a number of line art coloring books by Molly Harrison. I have enjoyed them tremendously for the beautiful artwork and design. I have recently begun working in grayscale and, while I am not very experienced with the process, I enjoy working with the actual grayscale of the artist’s actual artwork. It is a very different process from coloring and I am still exploring all the ways to accomplish it.
With this book and Ms. Harrison’s other new grayscale book (Bohemian Fantasy), I was inspired to work in alcohol-based markers rather than with pencils as I have been doing. It provides a really different look as markers give a translucent feel versus the opaque look I get when working with coloring pencils.
There are 25 pieces of art to color in this book. If you haven’t tried grayscale before, I found working in this book to be both easy and fun. That was why I was comfortable with trying new methods. There is a lot of shading present and the tone of the grayscale printing is medium which allows me to either add blending or not depending on my mood. In my first project, I did a lot of blending in the night sky but less in the other elements.
This is what I found when working with this book:
25 Grayscale Designs from Molly Harrison’s actual artwork
Printed on one side of the page
Paper is thin, white, non-perforated and slightly rough typical of CreateSpace paper
Glue Bound
Designs stop before the binding and have a framing line around the outside of the artwork to provide a stopping point and a more elegant look.
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through this paper
Gel pens and India ink pens leave color shadows on the back of the page.
Coloring pencils work well with this paper. You can put down light to heavy color, it blends and layers well. Hard lead pencils leave dents on the back of the page.
You can cut pages out of this book without losing any portion of the design. I found that I could easily get the book to lay flat for coloring. I also decided to keep my pages in the book for right now and used a blotter page to keep ink and dents from marring the pages below.