22 Adorable full page and 10 reduced size Kitten designs printed one side of the page

Teacup Kittens Coloring Book

By: Kayomi Harai

Rating: 4 of 5

I really like the designs in this book. The artist, Kayomi Harai is new to me but I will certainly be looking for her books after purchasing the two that are now available. The kittens in the book are designed in what seems to be a hybrid of line drawing and grayscale as much of the cat fur details are done in shades of gray. The kittens are adorable and range from those in teacups to fairy kittens, a kitten in bath and many other cute poses.

In my first project, I used gray marker which almost completely obscured the shading so I will be careful with my use of gray in the future and use darker colors on the shading prior to using an all-over color to begin with.

My only issue with the book has to do with the publishing. Designs Originals has, this year, begun shrinking a number of the designs to include coloring information on the design page. It’s been disappointing to me as it renders to the designs harder to color by making the details too small. In this book, ten of the designs are reduced. I like the coloring information but think it could be limited to the colored sample pages or to a page of its own rather than reducing the coloring pages. Because of this issue, I dropped my rating a star from a five to a four.

Apart from that, I am really enjoying the book. With these particular designs, shrinking has made the designs a bit more difficult to color but, thankfully, it has not made them intricate or too tiny to deal with. There are many pages, at the front of the book, with coloring hints and colored samples of designs as well.

This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring mediums.

32 Kitten designs 22 full size and 10 reduced size designs

Designs are printed on one side of the page with cute quotes and journal lines on the back of the page.

Paper is medium weight, white, slightly rough and perforated. It is also noted as acid-free archival quality.

Glue Binding

Designs stop before the perforations

Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page

Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows on the back of the page. India ink pens can spot through as well depending on how heavily they are applied.

Colored pencils work well with the paper. Both oil and wax based pencils provide good color, layer the same or multiple colors well, and blend easily using a blending stick. Hard lead pencils can dent through the page.

I like to use a blotter page below my working page to keep seeping ink and dents from marring the pages below. I use card stock but two sheets of heavyweight paper work well, too. You can also simply remove pages before coloring to keep the rest of the book in good condition as well.