46 Beautiful Illustrations based on The Lunar Chronicles designs printed on one side of the page

The Lunar Chronicles Coloring Book

By: Marissa Meyer

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a beautifully illustrated coloring book based on the New York Times Best selling series by Marissa Meyer, The Lunar Chronicles. The designs are by a fan artist, Kathryn Gee. For the most part, the designs represent four of the books in the series (Cinder, Scarlett, Cress, and Winter) though there is one design from Stars Above. The designs wonderfully represent the series which is a great cross of science fiction and fairy tales.

The designs are divided into four sections: The Crew, Allies and Villains, The World of the Lunar Chronicles, and Moments. On the facing page of each design is an excerpt from one of the books or, at the beginning of each section, an interesting note from Ms. Meyer about the process of writing the series.
Each section develops around its theme. In The Crew, there are designs of many characters (and my favorites!), including: Linh Cinder, Emperor Kaito, Iko, Scarlet Benoit, Ze’ev Wolf Kesley, Crescent Moon Cress Darnel, Captain Carswell Thorne, Princess Winter Hayle-Blackburn, and Sir Jacin Clay. The three other sections have additional characters, locations, and scenes from the book. It’s a great representation of the stories for fans of the books.
Additionally, Ms. Meyer tells the fun and interesting story of how the coloring book came to be. I think it is great that Ms. Meyer chose a fan-artist to illustrate the book and the story behind that choice makes the coloring book even more special. There is a special illustration that started the ball rolling on the project. I’ll include that one first in the photos that I upload.
The designs are detailed and will be fun to color. They are not so intricate that they will require special nib pens, markers, etc. but each one will provide hours of coloring time.
This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium. I will list, in the comments section below, the coloring medium I used to test this book and which I generally use in my coloring projects.
46 Design Pages with quotes from books printed on back of page
Designs printed on one side of the page
Paper is heavyweight, white, slightly smooth, and perforated
Sewn Binding
You can remove pages from the book at the perforations but I don’t plan to do so as it will break the continuity of the story included.
While most designs stop short of the perforations, some designs are printed across the perforations and into the binding area.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper. Rather than remove pages from the book, I use card stock as a blotter when using this medium. It will soak through the design page but the card stock stops it from bleeding through and damaging the page below.
Water-based markers, India ink and gel pens do not bleed through or leave shadows on the back of the page.
Colored Pencils work well with this paper. I tested both oil and wax-base pencils and got good results with both. My tests were for pigment lay down, layering the same color, layering multiple colors, and blending using a pencil style blending stick.