60 Beautiful line drawings of art masterpieces printed one side of the page

Art Masterpieces to Color: 60 Great Paintings from Botticelli to Picasso (Dover Art Coloring Book)

By: Marty Noble

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a wonderful coloring book large with 60 designs which are based on a wide variety of art masterpieces. There is a wide range of artists with each design listing the artist, the name of the painting, and the date it was painted (bottom of the page.)

The designs are listed in alphabetical order according to the name of the artist with Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s A Coign of Vantage 1895 first and Grant Wood’s American Gothic 1930 being last.
At the back of the book, there is an alphabetical listing of the artists and interesting information about each of them.
The rendering of the designs by Marty Noble is beautifully done. Most of the designs are detailed while only a few of them have intricate and small areas to color. What I really appreciate about Ms. Noble is that she generally leaves plenty of room for shading and highlighting if you choose to try those.
This is what I saw while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium.
60 designs derived from Masterpiece artworks line drawings by Marty Noble
The designs are printed one side of the page
Paper is the usual Creative Haven quality: white, medium weight, slightly rough and has perforated pages.
Glue Binding but with perforated pages so removing a page is fairly simple.
The designs stop well before the perforations
Thumbnail prints of the original 60 art works are on the inside flap of the covers and the back of the book.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper
Water-based markers bleed through in spots and show colorful shadows on the back of the page
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of the page. India ink pens can bleed through when I apply more than one layer of ink.
Coloring pencils work well with this paper. I was able to get good color, layer the same color and multiple colors and blend easily using a pencil style blender. I tested both oil and wax-based pencils with similar results. Hard lead pencils, like Verithins, leave dents on the back of the page.
I suggest either removing pages from the book to color or using a blotter page under your working page. I like card stock as it keeps ink from seeping through and damaging the pages below.