The Bicycle Coloring Book: Journey to the Edge of the World
By: Shan Jiang
Rating: 5 of 5
This is a wonderful and imaginative coloring book about the adventures of a bicycle and a cat. I’ve never seen anything quite like this before and was really impressed by the scope and detail of the book. It is like a visual story book with lots of interesting locations. There is a twist at the end that I wasn’t expecting, so be sure to look for that. The illustrations are quite fun to color but are detailed and have small and intricate spots to color.
In addition to the regular coloring pages there is a two page, two sided fold-out in the middle of the book. On the inside is the colored version of the design. On the outside is the line drawing of the same design. Other than wishing that the reverse had been done (so my colored version would be on the solid page, I think it is a fold addition to the book. Because of the switch in positions, you can never see your colored designs in whole as the colored one is presented.
There is also a really fun flip-page motion story of the cat. It is in the lower left hand corner of the backside of each page. You see the motion by flipping through the pages rapidly.
I had some fun coloring my first project in this book. I decided to try the Sargent’s 50 pencil set that I leave out for guests to use when they come to visit. I had never colored a full design with these pencils before and I was surprised at how well they worked (though the color went on extremely light and took several layers to show up the way I wanted them to.) I will certainly be using a wide range of medium with this book (as it is printed on one side of the page.) I will also switch colors on the cat and bicycle to suit my imagination on that day.
This is what I found in this book and by coloring and testing with various medium:
65 single page designs plus two foldout pages for a total of 69 pages of coloring designs
A Flip-page motion book of the cat (reverse side of the page in the corner
Designs printed on one side of the page
Paper is white, smooth, heavyweight, and non-perforated
Sewn Binding
Except for the fold-out pages, designs do not merge into the binding area and have a framing line around the outside of the design edge.
Book is quite thick and the spin must be creased in order to get it to lay somewhat flat for coloring
Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper in a spotty fashion. I suggest a blotter page under your working page to keep ink from spotting through to the next design.
Water-based markers, India ink pens, and gel pens do not bleed through the paper. Gel pens require extra drying time.
Colored pencils had mixed results. Wax-based, oil-based, soft lead and hard lead all put down good color and layered well though Prismacolor Premier pencils needed several layers to get good solid coverage. None of the pencils I tested did a great job of blending though my best results were with Caran D’Ache Luminance wax-based pencils. It was still great but it was better. The blending issue was not of as much importance to me in this book as the details are so small, I will not be doing blending too often.