Enchanted Forest Artist’s Edition: 20 Drawings to Color and Frame
By: Johanna Basford
Rating: 5 of 5
These are some of the beautiful designs that originally appeared in Joanna Basford’s besting selling Enchanted Forest coloring book. Of her three books thus far, I must admit this is my favorite though I like and enjoy all of them.
I recently purchased and reviewed the UK version of this book and promised to include a list of the differences between the UK and the US version. I’m pleased to say that apart from slight wording changes on the cover, there is no difference at all. They are published by the same company with the same materials. The exact same color, size, weight, and they work identically with various coloring mediums.
I’m really pleased that Ms. Basford has begun publishing artist’s editions (starting last year with Secret Garden.) The Artist’s Edition of Enchanted Forest (compared to the original book) is larger, the paper is considerably heavier and, of course, these are printed on only one side of the page which allows you to color the design with any medium you choose.
There are 20 designs in the larger format book which is a small subset of the designs in the original book. Some of my favorites are included but then again, there are some that did not make the cut. Perhaps they will show up in the calendar scheduled for later this year or who knows if there may someday be a volume 2 of the Artists Edition (hint, hint).
In some cases, the designs in this version are slightly enlarged compared to the original (for example, the hot hair balloon and the fox) but in most cases the designs are slightly to more than slightly smaller in size. It seems as if the width of the design caused some to be decreased. Anything that came close to the edge of the original book was made smaller as the width dimension of the artist’s edition is more narrow.
The few designs that were taken from two-page spreads in the original are treated two separate ways: 1) the entire two-page designs is put on a single page and is much smaller in size compared to the original, and 2) in a couple of instances, only a portion of the design is reproduced and in that case, the portion of the design is slightly larger than the original.
The cover of the book is hinged with a secondary cover beneath it. The actual pages are glue bound but with the type of binding that allows you to remove pages easily and in whole (think of a notepad type of binding.) The pages are a light cream tone. It is much quite different from my original US book which looks almost slightly green in tone when the two books are sitting side by side. The paper is such a nice quality, it will be easy to remove and frame these if you wish.
My various coloring medium all worked well with this edition. For my first design in the US version, I used a variety of Copic, Bic Mark-it and Sharpie alcohol-based markers. I will also include photos of the first designs I did in the UK version where I used a variety of alcohol and water-based markers without serious bleed-through. The paper works fantastic with these markers as the only colors that have yet to have the slightest hint of a stain on the back of the page are my deep red and blue tones.
When I tested the rest of my coloring mediums, India ink did not bleed through. Gel pens did not bleed through but required more drying time than usual. Soft lead coloring pencils worked with the card stock and blended and layered well. Hard lead pencils went on with a nice color and did not dent through the page.