50 Detailed Nature Designs (with lots of doodles) by Janelle Dimmett printed one side of page

Natural Patterns: A Coloring Book by Janelle Dimmett

By: Janelle Dimmett

Rating: 5 of 5

This is my first coloring book by Janelle Dimmett. It’s a wonderful hardback book (part of a new series by Pomegranate) which is filled with 50 designs. The designs are detailed and often intricate requiring smaller nib pens, markers or sharp pencils in order to color. The designs are focused on the natural world with animals and plant life. The designs contains tiny doodle style elements which allows you to color the natural world in your own (and potentially quite unnatural) fashion.

What was different for me in this particular book versus the others from Pomegranate is that there were no color thumbnails at the front and back of the book. In this case, it seems that the artist works in ink on paper so it makes sense that the thumbnails were missing. I will admit I was a tad disappointed, though.

There is a table of contents which provides the names for each of the designs. The pages are also numbered to the table of contents but in some cases, the page numbers ended up incorporated into the design. It might have been better to have put the page numbers on the back of each page with this particular artist’s work.

This is what I discovered while coloring in this book and using my coloring medium to test the pages:

50 Natural Designs with a high level of detail

Printed on one side of the page

Paper is heavyweight, white, slightly smooth, and non-perforated

Sewn binding with a thin glossy hard back cover

Some designs merge into the binding area

Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper quite readily

Water-based markers can spot through. The exception was my Tombow brush ends did not spot through even with dark and bright colors.

Gel pens and India ink pens did not bleed through but some gel pens took much longer to dry than usual.

Colored pencils worked well with this paper. I tested both oil and wax based in several brands. I was able to get light pigment as well as heavy (with multiple layers) and to layer colors and blend well using a pencil style blending stick. My hard lead pencils were good color as well with crisp lines and did not dent through the page.