Hippie Animals Coloring Book
By: Thaneeya McArdle
Rating: 5 of 5
I own several of Thaneeya McArdle’s coloring books, including one called “Dapper Animals”. In this new book, Ms. McArdle goes to the other end of the fashion spectrum and gives us “Hippie Animals”. While most fall firmly in the category of Hippie, I think a few cross over into the more modern category of Hipsters. In any case, they are cute and are extremely fun to color. It’s time to pull out your psychedelic colors and make a groovy rainbow out of their outfits. There are love beads, bell bottoms, and granny glasses. The peace symbols and the flower headbands remind me of my older sisters during the hippie period.
The designs are detailed with lots of fun doodles to color. The eyes on most of the animals has been done in a shaded grayscale. It makes for a very different eye that what I usually do but it is an unusual and nice change. The back of the page has quotes by famous individuals and unknowns that mostly deal with peace and love (the hippie mantra). I really like that a number of them are quotes from songs. It appears that the publisher has changed from color print on these back pages back to light gray print. I prefer that as sometimes the color could show through to the front of the page depending on which medium I work with.
Once again, I love the designs in this book but I am less pleased with the way that the publisher is printing 8 of the designs in less than full size. They have included a thumbnail color sample, some sample colors used in their design for inspiration and a few words to talk about the colors. It takes up the bottom 2.5 inches of the page. This information could be printed on a separate page or on the actual color sample page rather than on the coloring page.
In this book, it makes less of a difference than in other books. The designs can still be colored as there aren’t tiny elements but I would much rather color a full page designs. As the designs are not difficult to color, I won’t detract any stars from my review.
