Art of Coloring: Moana: 100 Images to Inspire Creativity
By: DBG
Rating: 4 of 5
The designs in this coloring book are quite cute and remind me of the film in good ways. Not all of the characters are represented but those who are have great quality designs.
The designs span from detailed to very simple. There are many wall-paper (repeating pattern) designs and there are really nice character studies. The designs range from simple line drawings to those where there are heavy lines and heavy use of black (which may be a problem for some.)
The book is part of the Art of Coloring series and has changed format in a number of ways from the earlier books in this series. Moana has a soft cover, is smaller, has thinner paper, has glue binding and has perforated pages. Personally, I don’t mind the change (except for the thinner paper) but it makes for a mismatched set. Having said that, I’ve recently seen (at my local bookstore) that the older books have changed format and are now being published in the same format as Moana.
The book is sized smaller at 10 7.8 x 7 inches (compared to approximately 11 1 /2 x 8 inches. For those who like to scan and print their pages on better paper, this will make it easier as it should work with most standard scanner/printers.
The soft cover is okay but I would have hoped for a better value on the book if the quality of the publishing was being diminished. That is also true of the paper. Moana has medium weight paper (compared to the heavy weight of the earlier books.)
The change from sewn to glue binding makes it more difficult to get the book to open flat for coloring. As the pages are now perforated, the lack of ease of snipping threads to remove pages is less important. While my pages line up well, they line up at the binding and the perforations and the glue binding make it difficult to open to see the continuity of the design.
The perforated pages are a nice change; however, given that the designs are printed on both sides of the page and many of the designs spread across two pages, the usefulness of the perforated pages is diminished.
One of my issues with designs/publishing is a heavy use of wall-paper designs. I would have been okay with this if the publisher had used some forethought and placed the wall-paper designs on the reverse of the more unique designs.
Because of the way the book was put together, for the most part, I will be using colored pencils. I will be willing to give up most of the wall-paper designs if I prefer to use markers on the reverse page but that will be limited to maybe a third of the designs in the book.
This is what I found while coloring in the book and testing my color medium on the paper.
124 Moana inspired Design pages
30 pages of wall-paper style repeating designs
17 Designs spread across two pages
Printed on both sides of page
Paper is medium weight, white, very slightly rough, and perforated
Glue binding
Many designs extend across the perforations, some into the binding. Certainly true of the two-page spreads and removing them from the book will result in loss of design. I was able to break the spine to get into the binding area a bit easier but there are still some issues with coloring and continuity of design.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the paper
Water-based markers either bled through or left colorful shadows on the back of the paper.
Gel pens and India ink pens left anywhere from colorful shadows to indistinct shadows on the back of the page but even at best, where still noticeable.
Colored pencils worked well with this paper. I was able to get good, deep pigment. I could layer easily (both same and different colors.) Blending was okay though the tooth of the paper was not optimal. I was able to blend with a pencil style blending stick.