Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Magical Characters and Places Coloring Book
By: HarperCollins Publishers
Rating: 5 of 5
While I (as many others) am eagerly awaiting the release of the movie on which this coloring book is based, I was really pleased to get this book ahead of the movie release. It gives a sense of the vibe of the movie and also allows my imagination to run full rein as, apart from a few clips on-line and the pictures on the inside of the front and back page, I don’t have preconceived notions of what something should look like.
The book is well made and the designs are well done. I appreciate having the handful of small colored pictures (rather than pages of them.) The scenes are set in New York in the 1926. It is an interesting time period as the excess of the roaring 20’s was still in place but, historically speaking, there were foreshadowing of the Great Depression already in place.
The designs are detailed for the most part (though some of the character designs are quite open and free of details.) There are a few designs that have intricate and small areas to color. I’ve already started my first two projects in the book and am looking forward to coloring through the pictures (probably before the movie is released) and will certainly be waiting for the next coloring books in the series to be released.
This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my various coloring medium. In the comments section below, I will list the coloring medium I use for testing and for most of my coloring projects:
78 Pages of Fantastic Beasts Designs based on the movie
Printed on both sides of the page
Paper is heavyweight, white, slightly smooth and non-perforated
Binding is hybrid glue/sewn. If you wish to remove pages, you will have to cut them out. I do not plan on doing so as so much important detail will be lost.
Designs merge into the binding area
Many designs spread across two pages. On my copy, the pages line up well.
Book can be opened fairly flat for coloring by breaking the spine, though it is still difficult to color into the binding area
Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper rapidly. If you use this medium, you will definitely mar the design on the back of the page.
Water-based markers did not bleed through; however, Stabilo 88 and Staedler fineliners left the faintest of shadows on the back of the page.
Gel pens and India ink pens did not bleed through or leave shadows. Some gel pens required additional drying time.
Colored pencils worked well with this paper. I got fairly good pigment from both oil and wax-based pencils. Layering the same color for deeper pigment worked well as well as layering multiple colors. Blending with a pencil style blending stick worked pretty well though my Tombow Irojiten did not blend as well as my other pencils (perhaps due to their hardness.)