The Art Therapy line of colouring books has popped up in many countries. You know the A4-sized rather thick books with a cardboard front cover that has the front page image glued to it. There are dozens of books in the series: Art Deco, Islamic tiles, Indian patterns and so on. While on vacation in Rome, I saw a book in this series with Scandinavian patterns. Interestingly, this book is yet to be published in Sweden so naturally I picked it up. It has since become one of my favourite colouring books!
Art Therapy Scandinavia is a hybrid of named artists work and Shutterstock images. (Please follow this link for an explanation/review of Shutterstock books.) Above is the cover which is a sturdy brown paper glued to the usual thick cardboard cover which is typical for this series. I actually like this binding, it's an inexpensive way to make strudy colouring books which you can colour on your lap when space is tight.
Inside one of the first pages is this lovely stylized landscape with the cottage which I have coloured in using Polychromos pencils.
Like most Shutterstock books, the paper is not perfect but still sturdy enough to hold water-based markers and fineliners without any bleeding. The pages are double-sided and not perforated, but the book opens up nicely so there is no struggle reaching the innermost parts of the page.The designs are also not printed all over the page, there usually is a clear margin of a few centimeters which also makes it easier to reach the edges.
Many of the pages contain folk-art patterns common in different Swedish and other Scandinavian regions. In the Dalarna region these patterns are called "kurbits". These are great fun to colour although most of them are not very detailed. But of course every pattern is what you make of it, you can put as little or as much effort into something as you feel like at the moment. These patterns are quite quick to colour with the Faber-Castell Pitt Artist pens with the brush nib being the perfect size for this amount of detail.
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| Two "Kurbits" patterns coloured with F-C Pitt Artist pens |
Overall, this book is one I reach for whenever I want a bit of a fancyful and diverse relaxation. It contains everything from decorative folklore patterns, whimsical coffeecups, a few stylized urban and interior scenes and many other lovely designs. The book is also very well edited so that all the images maintain approximately the same style of art, even though they come from several different artists. So if this book is available in your country, I definitely recommend you go and pick it up. And Swedish publisher Tukan förlag, I'm looking at you - bring this book to Sweden pronto!
[UPDATE] My colouring friend on Instagram, @girl_with_javacurls, asked to see some pictures from the book so here they are, in extremely poor photo quality :
Thank you so much for posting additional photos of this book! What is interesting is that I have a book called, "Scandinavian Folk Patterns" by Michael O'Mara and the illustrations appear to be the same. But I will have to compare tomorrow. I have an Art Therapy book for Mosiaques and these books are definitely bigger than my Scandinavian Folk Patterns. So perhaps your book also contains more images than mine. I find it fascinating how they change a coloring book depending on where it's published and sold. Have fun coloring this book!
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