31 Sweet and Detailed Hand-drawn Designs Celebrating Love printed one side of the page

Creative Haven Let There Be Love Coloring Book (Adult Coloring)

By: Alexandra Cowell

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a lovely coloring book of hand-drawn, rather sketchy looking designs that celebrate Love of all kinds. There are lots of hearts and flowers, words explaining the type of love shown in the design, and even couples (mostly animals). I especially like the baby carriage design as it is so darn cute. There are also pages of multiple designs that are presented in small blocks. I like the look and the unique quality of that presentation. It gives me a small project (i.e., a block) to finish in a short amount of time. I can usually finish one during a small break in work.

I found the designs to be both detailed and intricate. There are many tiny spaces to color in most of the designs. I used primarily ultra-fine point markers and gel pens on my first project and will certainly be continuing to use these mediums as I color my way through the book. I’ll post a photo of my first project as well as samples from the book.

The designs have a lovely sketch look to them. The hand-drawn quality is especially interesting to me. I like many computer generated and computer drawn designs as well but I am drawn to handwork first and foremost.

This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing my coloring medium on the paper. I will list, in the comments section below, the coloring medium I use for testing and for most of my coloring projects.

31 Detailed Sketch style designs with Love as the emphasis.

Designs are printed one side of the page

Paper is typical of Creative Haven: white, medium weight, slightly smooth and has perforated pages.

Glue Binding with perforations so you can remove them one at a time.

The designs stop well before the perforations

Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper

Water-based markers bleed through with colorful spots and shadows on the back of the page

Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of the page. India ink pens can bleed through if you apply heavily or with with multiple layers.

Coloring pencils work well with this paper. I was able to use both wax and oil based pencils equally well. I was able to get good color and to get deeper pigment by layering the same color. I found that I could layer multiple colors and blend easily using a blending stick. Hard lead pencils leave dents on the back of the page.

I generally prefer to use a blotter page under my working page to keep ink from seeping through but you can also remove pages from the book to color. I like card stock for my blotter page but a couple of sheets of heavyweight paper works as well.