Cute illustrations of a make-believe town with two types of paper used in printing printed both sides of the page

My Colorful Town: A Coloring Tour

By: Chiaki Ida

Rating: 4 of 5

This is a really cute coloring book based on the imaginary story of a young girl walking through her town and seeing all of stores and other sights to see. The hand-drawn illustrations are very well done and will provide many hours of coloring fun. While the young girl is present in most designs, in some we get to see her town/shops as she does.

The only slightly odd thing I discovered about the book is that it seems that two types of paper were used. They are both the same color (very light ivory) but the texture is different. Most of the pages have a slightly rough feel when I run my thumb across them. There are a few (less than half) that feel very smooth when I do the same test. I’ve only had this happen once before with a book, so I don’t think this common and I question whether it was planned or not.
As my pencils react slightly differently to both types of paper, I knocked a star off my rating because of this issue. In the comments area below, I will provide a full listing of the various coloring medium I used to test both styles of paper. The only slight difference I noted was with pencils.
Apart from that, I really like the book. It is smaller than many of these style books (at only 9 x 9 inches) but I can still color the detailed drawings fairly easily. There are some area that have intricate and smaller elements to color.
This is what I experienced while coloring and testing this book:
68 pages of designs inspired by imaginary town (not including Title or intro pages)
Designs are both sides of page with many two-page spreads
Paper is light ivory, medium weight, non-perforated and some pages are slightly rough while others are fairly smooth.
Sewn Binding
Many designs spread into the binding area (especially, of course, the two-page spread designs.)
Alcohol-based markers bled through the page.
Water-based markers either left noticeable shadows or bleed through in small spots.
India ink pens and gel pens left colorful shadows on the back of the page. Gel pens took a longer time than normal to dry.
Coloring pencils worked well with this paper. I was able to get good color from both wax and oil-based pencils. I was able to layer the same and multiple colors fairly easily.
The rougher texture paper took the pigment well in light layers while the smoother texture paper took pigment well with one coat. Blending (with a blender stick) worked best with the rougher texture paper. I was able to blend with the smooth paper but it took a lighter touch to keep it from smearing.