iiiiReader Book Reviews

I own a number of coloring books by Nathaniel Wake. I’ve found that the artist responsible for the designs (whose name is not Nathaniel Wake – that is an imprint name for the publisher), has an interesting design style. His females come across as stronger characters than most represented in coloring books and this is especially true of the women in this coloring book

There is a good range of women and men along with scenes of daily life, Japanese motifs, animals and even children. The designs are detailed with lots of elements which will which allow me to spend more time coloring each page.

You can receive a digital download of the book as part of the purchase of the print copy (instructions in the book). While printing those copies is a great plus, I will be reviewing (and videoing and photo images) from the print copy.

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I own another coloring book by Sara Burrier which is a pocket size book. With “World of Fairies”, the coloring book is larger though still on the smaller size for a standard coloring book at 8 x 10 inches.

The designs in this book are 20 magical fairies. The fairies range in age from a young girl to adults. The adults make up most of the designs. They are shown by themselves or with animals. Each of the designs has a background included though some are more extensive than others.

The designs are detailed and with some intricate and small areas to color. I think that some of the images might have been able to be scaled larger as there is a lot of white space all around and I wish that the artist had considered doing that.

However, that is a bit of a nit as the artwork is quite lovely. Ms. Burrier has a distinctive look to her characters and I am enjoying this book as much as I did the first.

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I own the other two Grumpy Cat coloring books by Creative Haven and I must say that this new one is my favorite thus far. It may be because the artist is different on this book or perhaps the subject allows more creative license.

In this book, there are 31 design pages which feature Grumpy Cat frowning her way through a hobby. Some of the hobbies include coloring (of course!), origami, birding, quilting, beekeeping, knitting and more. You may just find your favorite hobbies lampooned just as I did mine.

Something I really appreciate about the difference in this book from the first is the lack of floating repeat pattern designs. Each one of the designs in this book is unique and is crafted to show the hobby and Grumpy Cat’s distinct lack of interest in it.

I’ve noticed that the paper quality seems to change quite frequently on the Creative Haven line. Because of that, if you buy one of these books, it may be slightly smooth or slightly rough depending on when and where it was printed. I’ve found that coloring medium, including pencils, work similarly with both slightly rough and slightly smooth paper from Creative Haven. In this case, my coloring book pages are slightly smooth.

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This is a fun coloring book with lots of interesting images. It might be more correctly referred to as manga as anime generally means that there is a cartoon animation associated with the book. Manga is a whimsical drawing or comic. As far as I can tell, there are no cartoons with this book but, to a degree, for the coloring world, this is probably pretty much a nit issue.

What is more interesting about this book is that rather than giving us a second copy of each image (something that the publisher Jade Summer does with their books), in this case, the second image actually has some finer details added to the face. Particularly to the nose and mouth of the character studies. It is amazing the difference it can add. My video will show all images but I have only included both photos of one image to show the difference. The rest of the images are of the more simple style.

The designs are really cute with lots of detail. They are not intricate or hard to color. For fans of this style (which I am), it is a really fun book. The boys and girls (younger and older teenagers rather than the children in the Chibi books by this imprint) look like they are having a lot of fun just being kids.

You can receive a digital download of the book as part of the purchase of the print copy (instructions in the book). While printing those copies is a great plus, I will be reviewing (and videoing and photo images) from the print copy.

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This is one of the more recent releases in the series of “Make Your Own Art Masterpiece” coloring books from Flame Tree. The designs in this book are based on the artwork of famed illustrator Arthur Rackham. The artwork is based on a variety of his works, including: “Aesop’s Fables”, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (a favorite of mine), a variety of fairy tales, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes and more. The illustrations have converted beautifully and, while detailed, will be much fun to color.

There are 45 line drawing designs to color. The designs were chosen by Daisy Seal and were illustrated by David Jones. The detail of the subject matter of each design is on the opposite facing page. There is a thumbnail of a small portion of the design with some color showing.

The inside flaps at the front and back of the book have black and white line drawings which can be colored as well The flaps are quite smooth but will accept various forms of color medium. The inside of the actual cover is left white which is too bad as it could have been used as a coloring opportunity as well.

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