All Creatures of Our God and King: Coloring Book (Coloring Faith)
By: Zondervan
Rating: 5 of 5
All Creatures of our God and King is the latest coloring book in Zondervan’s Coloring Faith series. It is the third such book that takes the lyrics of a famous hymn and provides illustrations to go along with it. The beautifully drawn illustrations celebrate the creatures of God’s creation but are not generally Christian in nature. The lyrics are most definitely faith-based and inspiring.
I own both of the other books (Amazing Grace and It is Well with my Soul) and what I find different and perhaps better about this book is that the artists (Suzanne Khushi and Julianne St. Claire) have provided great illustrations on both sides. In the previous books, the lyric pages were only lightly illustrated. With this book, the left-hand lyric pages are just as beautiful for coloring as the illustration only pages on the right hand side.
This hymn was inspired by St. Francis of Assisi in the Canticle of the Sun poem. An English pastor, William Draper, translated the words into English around the turn of of the twentieth century. He also set the words to music. The hymn was published in 1919 in the Public School Hymn Book.
This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing my various coloring medium on the paper:
45 full page designs printed on right hand side of page
45 pages of equally fully illustrated lyrics on the opposite side of the page
Designs/Lyrics are printed on both sides of the page
Paper is heavyweight, white, lightly smooth, and perforated
Glue binding
Some designs extend beyond the perforations but nothing of important will be lost if you remove a page from the book
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the paper
Water-based markers and India ink pens leave shadows on back of page
Gel pens do not leak through the page
Colored pencils work really well with this paper. I was able to use both oil based and wax based pencils and get good color and to layer well. Using a pencil style blending stick, I was able to blend all of my colored pencils equally well.
If you use alcohol-based markers, they will ruin the design on the back of the page. To minimize further damage, you should consider using a blotter page of heavyweight paper to keep ink from seeping further into the book.