Colour My Sketchbook DARKER
By: Bennett Klein
Rating: 5 of 5
While I don’t have the previous book, I’ve compared some of the designs in my book with those shown on the review of Dark. It seems that there are many duplicates. Without having the first book to do a side-by-side comparison, I can’t confirm that all of the designs are duplicated. What I can say is that there seems to be more pages in Darker which may equate to more designs. You can check my silent video to see what is included in the coloring book.
This is my first book of Mr. Klein’s designs with black background. I have colored in similar style books before but trust Mr. Klein to take the concept forward a step by including beautiful elements in a deep gray tone to accent the final project. It gives a perfect background to those designs on which it is included. I guess you could color those areas but I intend to leave them as deep gray.
The designs are somewhat in gray scale but with so much black in the background, the artist wisely choose to leave more white space in the coloring elements. I will be able to use both my markers and my colored pencils while coloring in this book. As that is my preferred coloring method (markers for background and pencils for details), I am very happy with the way the book has been published.
With this book, the artist provides a table of contents with the title of each of his pieces of art. I really appreciate that extra touch as many of the titles give context to his intent with the design.
This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing my coloring medium on the paper.
30 Hand-drawn illustrations with white on black background (some gray scale elements as well)
Designs are printed on one side of thin, slightly rough non-perforated paper typical of CreateSpace. While the paper is actually white, the background of the designs are printed in black.
Glue Binding
Easy to open to flat position for coloring
Designs do not merge into the binding and there is plenty of room to cut pages out if you choose to do so
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page to some degree. Water-based bleed through in spots while alcohol-based bleed through freely
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of page. India ink can bleed through if you use multiple layers or apply heavily.
Colored pencils work well with this paper. Both oil and wax based provide good color when I use multiple layers of the same color. I am easily able to blend (using a pencil style blender stick) and layer multiple colors as well. Hard lead pencils leave dents through the back of the page.
Because of the bleed through and dents, I suggest (and use) a blotter page below my working page no matter what medium I use. I prefer card stock but several sheets of heavyweight paper work as well.