36 Unique and Elegant designs commemorating the Year of the Rooster 2017 printed one side of the page

Year of the Rooster: Adult Coloring Book

By: Phoenix Amulet

Rating: 5 of 5

Mardel Rubio has created a coloring book which commemorates the Chinese Year of the Rooster for 2017. Each of the designs include a rooster and the majority also include a beautiful Asian woman. As I have seen with other coloring books by Mr. Rubio, the designs also include doodle creatures enmeshed into the illustrations. I enjoy doodle creature books but have yet to find any others as refined as those by this artist. It’s fun to have a lovely designs to color and to decide whether to emphasize the creatures or to blend them in.

I was interested in what the year of the Rooster meant. It turns out that 2017 is a year of the Rooster in the Chinese zodiac cycle. There are 12 different animals which rotate as well as five elements. Rooster years always follow the year of the Monkey and preface the year of the Dog.
The Rooster this year is associated with Fire though the coloring book does not seem to emphasize that. I will bring that in with the colors that I use by choosing to use a lot of warm colors throughout the designs. The animal and elements only come together every sixty years, so this is the first time since 1957 it has been the year of a Fire Rooster.
The designs are quite detailed and include intricate elements with lots of tiny spots to color. I would not recommend this coloring book to anyone with fine motor or vision issues. I would also suggest that, for the intricate areas, use of ultra-fine point markers/pens or really sharp pencils would be best.
This is what I discovered while coloring in this book and testing my coloring medium on the paper:
36 Designs based on the Year of the Rooster also with Doodle creatures
Printed one side of the page
Paper is typical of CreateSpace: white, thin, slightly rough and non-perforated.
The designs merge into the binding area (and extend to all sides of the page)
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.