36 Beautiful new Designs plus 12 Bonus Designs by Nadiya Vasilkova printed on one side of the page

Magic Beauty: Coloring Book for Adult: Animals, Birds, Flowers, Mandalas, Beautiful Fairies

By: Nadiya Vasilkova

Rating: 5 of 5

This is my second coloring book by artist Nadiya Vasilkova. As with the first book, Magic Totem, Magic Beauty is printed mostly in a grayscale pointillism style. This is the style that was developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac during the 1800’s. The designs are beautifully drawn and include animals, flowers, and people.

In pointillism, the image is created by using very small uniform dots of color in place of the brush strokes we are used to seeing in paintings. Similar to Impressionism, the further you stand from a pointillism painting, the more you see the overall effect. The designs in this book are not printed in color but rather in varying shades and density of gray.
As with regular with grayscale coloring, you choose your colors based on the design. Light colors with light dots or areas where there are no dots, medium with medium, and dark with dark or densely dotted areas. I now use a base coat of markers with my colored pencils providing detail and shading.
What is interesting about this book is that she incorporates line drawings as well and some times that have both line drawings and pointillism mixed together. It makes for a unique and interesting design to color.
Along with the 39 design pages which are new in this book (includes presentation page), there are a bonus of 12 pages from Magic Totem as well.
This is what I found in coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium:
39 new designs and 12 bonus designs in beautiful grayscale pointillism and line drawings
Printed one side of page
Paper is typical of CreateSpace: white, thin, slightly rough and non-perforated.
Designs do not merge into the binding and there is plenty of room to cut out pages if you choose to do so.
Glue Binding
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page quickly.
Water-based markers bleed through in spots.
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows on back of the page. India ink can bleed through if you apply heavily or multiple coats.
Coloring Pencils work well with this paper. I found that I could layers the same color for deeper pigment or multiple colors and I could blend easily using a blending stick. I tested both oil and wax based pencils. I also found that hard lead pencils leave dents through the paper.
I like to use a blotter when working in the book. I use a page of card stock or several sheets of heavyweight paper under my working page. It keeps seeping ink and marring dents from ruining the pages below.