Magical Cats (Pads of Color)
By: arsEdition
Rating: 4 of 5
Once again, Barron’s has delivered a coloring book filled with designs that have been licensed through a variety of on-line sites. I have seen and colored a number of these designs before in other books. What makes this book a little more unique is the tear-off pad format, printing on one side of the page, and a slightly better quality of paper than I usually see in books of licensed images.
The format of the book is smaller than the usual coloring book. It is bound at the top of the page which makes it easy to get to all parts of the design. It has a glue-type binding similar to a notepad. The designs are of cats of all makes and sizes from tiny kittens to lions. Some designs are white on black background while most are black lines on white background. A good number of the cats have doodle style designs within their outlines.
I normally try to avoid licensed image coloring books because I own a number of them already and I end up duplicating a lot of what I already have. In this case, there were a number that I didn’t own, so I will enjoy coloring those. The print quality of the book is quite good, so that is a big plus as well. If you don’t own coloring books with licensed images and you like cats, you may very well love this book. I certainly like the way it is published with the tear off binding, top bound, hardboard backing and even the lovely foil touches on the cover.
This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with various coloring medium:
80 Cat Designs printed on one side of the page
Paper is white, medium weight and slightly smooth
Glue bound but pages tear off easily from the notepad style binding
Book is bound at the top of the page
Opens flat and has a hardboard backing to allow easy coloring on the go
Alcohol-based markers bled through the paper
Water-based markers with mixed. The only marker that bled through for me was Staedler triplus fineliners
Gel pens and India ink did not bleed through the page. Gel pens required additional drying time.
Coloring pencils did okay. I was able to get good color with multiple coats from both oil and wax based pencils. Layering did well but blending was not as good as it could have been. I found that the pigment smeared rather than blended.
If you use markers, you should either remove the pages from the book as I do or use a blotter page under your working page to keep ink from bleeding through.