Amazing birthday haul!

My boyfriend was real sneaky this year. I have a wish list on Amazon with colouring books and while he gained some inspiration from it, he never the less got me no less than three colouring books that weren't on the list but that were really spot on with what I love! I must say I'm really impressed. Not only with his choices but the fact that he encourages extending my colouring book library that already occupies an entire - albeit small - bookshelf. 

First I'm going to talk about these two beauties. I'd never heard of these books before; they are illustrated by Korean artist Jae Eun Lee and it's always interesting to see what an artist from a culture with very different artistic traditions makes of European themes and vice versa. I was impressed with the illustrations; they depict very accurate renditions of artefacts, fashion etc and in one of the pages I even recognised the palace gardens of Sanssouci! The illustrations are drawn with a touch of the Asian attention to detail and delicacy that really sets them apart from other books. That said, they are not that insanely detailed as say Tomoko Tashiro's books, aside from all the detailed work they do have plenty of larger areas for adding gradients, shading or your own details. I always love that balance in a book. I also love how both books are based on the original stories that have very little to do with the Disney versions. A bit of history and culture/literature lesson combined with colouring, can a girl ask for more?

The most awesome thing about these books is the versatility of the illustrations. In Beauty and the Beast, you will find interiors, costumes, portraits, fantasy creatures, landscapes, still life (food, beauty etc), flowers, and even decorative patterns. So no matter what you feel like colouring this book is guaranteed to have several pages to suit your mood.

In the Snow Queen there aren't so many interiors and rather more pages with animals such as deer and birds, and also beautiful landscapes. Both books are, in my opinion, pretty advanced. How about an entire double page filled with mirror shards?! Whew. But of course, like any book, this one is also what you make of it. I actually found my Pitt artist pens to be excellent in them, as the ink will make colouring progress quite quickly and the detailed bits will sort of create their own highlights and shadows so there is no need to overwork them with coloured pencil. But I do look forward to trying out my Polychromos as well!

The paper in both books is quite white but a little bit more ivory than in Lost Ocean. So it's a warm white hue. The paper quality is, thank Goodness, very good, Pitt pens don't bleed or shadow so there shouldn't be a problem with water-based supplies. 

Below I have videos of flipthroughs of both books. Enjoy!

 

The Snow Queen:

The third book is by indie artist Scot Howden. The books is called Colouring Fantasy and contains 24 images of all kinds of fantasy ladies: shieldmaidens, dragon trainers, mermaids, steampunk girls, fairies and so on. The images are fairly sensual without being too erotic. The lineart is more grey than black which makes it easier if you want to make them disappear under layers of colour. The only drawback of this book is the paper quality: it's an Amazon print-on-demand book and unfortunately Amazon only offers one kind of paper for anyone. So Amazon, will you please pay attention to all the artists out there so we can get books on paper that is worthy of all the amazing artwork out there? Thank you.

However the pages are single-sided so you should be fine with any media that isn't too wet because the paper would buckle considerably even with Pitt pens or Inktense used with very little water. I recommend coloured pencils for this book. 
For colouring inspiration I recommend visiting Scot's Facebook page where most of the gals in the book can be viewed as his original art. He really is a sublime colourist and I will so steal his colours! ;)

Here is a flipthrough of the Colouring Fantasy book:

A sponsored post... sort of! Mielikuvia vol 1

When I started this blog I made a kind of statement out of having purchased every item I post myself. I really don't mind reading sponsored blogs but sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed by marketing that seems to be seeping into every corner of life nowadays, and I really want my little social media outlets to be a kind of sanctuary away from all that. Also I'm apalled by the widespread practice used by mainly Chinese vendors on Amazon who seem to blanket people with goods "in exchange for an honest review" and somehow I rarely find those reviews either particularly honest or very helpful. Marco Raffinés, I'm looking at you! 

The other day though I saw post from an indie illustrator I follow on Instagram, Päivi Vesala. She wondered if there were any people interested in reviewing her first colouring book as she's hard at work on the second. I really like her work so I volunteered to receive a copy from the publisher. So strictly speaking my blog is no longer sponsor-free, but I don't feel bad about spreading the word about an independent artist  - whose Facebook page currently stands at 540 likes - and hopefully this can't be considered to compromise my integrity. I would see no point in reviewing stuff that appears widely commercially, just for the chance of a free copy (although if Faber-Castell ever wants to throw a set of Albrecht Dürers my way I probably get off my high horse faster than you can say sellout). For future reference, all items presented will be purchased by me just like before - unless stated otherwise. Regardless of the source, my reviews will continue to focus on books and art supplies that are a bit unusual and that I don't see all over the place.

Hopefully this long introduction has left at least some people awake to look at the actual book!

Mielikuvia vol 1 comes with an attractive reddish cover and is spiral-bound, something that will please a lot of people out there. The book has 100 pages which means 50 illustrations as the pages are one-sided. Anthing else would have been madness because the paper is the one big drawback of this publication. I'm not very picky about paper quality - just about any paper will handle Polychromos well enough. But I do wish that more publishers and artists would pay more attention to paper quality, it would be a real treat if all the beautiful illustrations were brought to us on nice paper. There is not one colouring tool that doesn't perform much nicer on good paper! 

The paper in Mielikuvia vol 1 is not very different from printer paper. It's OK with Polychromos and Triplus fineliners and even handles Pitt artist pens without pilling the paper, which is impressive considering the thinness of the paper and the fact that the Pitt pens are rather wet and therefore can a bit difficult on low quality paper. All in all I'm OK with the paper but I hope for sure for an upgrade for the next volume!

The illustrations are lovely and right up my alley with a mix of quirky, imaginative and expressive images ranging from very detailed to very bold. Some pages are drawn with thin spidery outlines while in other images, the black ink almost dominates the design. On the Facebook page there are plenty of inspiration colourings, I especially liked this one with the little fleet of bizarre flying fish soaring very purposefully in the rain. :) Apparently Päivi is an expert colourist in addition to skilled illustrator! Definitely stealing this colour scheme for the future.

The above picture is from the Facebook photo gallery of the coloured pages in the book.

Here are some photos I took from my own copy:

All in all I'm going to have great fun colouring this book and am really looking forward to colume 2, here's a sneak peak from Facebook:

Marco Raffiné pencils - swatch and first impression

So it finally arrived, my box of the 72-count Marco Raffiné coloured pencils! I had seen the colouring community swoon and rave over these pencils for the past 6 months so I just had to see what all the fuss is about. I took the plunge when I saw the pencils being sold on Amazon for a similar price as Ebay. Earlier Amazon had some sellers but the price was so much higher than Ebay or Aliexpress that I couldn't justify getting them. Reports of ridiculously long delivery times from Ebay and Aliexpress deterred me from getting them from these sites, also I love Amazon's customer service whose generosity and solution focused approach has saved me on several occasions.

The first thing that struck me was the weight of the box. I don't know what I had thought but just seeing photos of the box never made me think it would weigh so much! It felt nice in my hand. However I discarded the box straight away, I hate flimsy cardboard boxes. Some people also complained about a strong chemical smell but I attributed this to the box. The pencils themselves smell good like wooden colouring pencils should. (I always sniff on everything new!)

The pencils never struck me as particularly handsome and real life confirmed this. The silvery finish is more plasticky than silvery and is unevenly applied on some pencils. The hexagonal shape and colour indicator on top are OK features. The wood is of varied quality: some pencils are flawless while others shave away quite a bit. However I was pleasantly surprised by the lead quality as I sharpened the whole 72 set and only got one minor tip breakage which was fixed with just a little bit more sharpening. All pencils arrived seemingly undamaged so I'm hoping that no leads are broken further inside the pencils!

The pencils have no colour names but fortunately they are numbered in a straightforward fashion, from 501 to 572, making swatching a breeze. I made a handdrawn colour chart as I currently don't possess an operating printer. Or, there is a printer but it's ink and I'm afraid to use it in colouring because the lines might smudge from blenders and such so we haven't really plugged it in.

Upon swatching I soon discovered that the individual pencils vary in quality within the set: some glide nicely along the paper giving off even and rich pigmentation, while others feel waxy and smeary and leave a patchy result. I therefore took a leaf out of Faber Castell's book and marked the individual pencils with dots from 1-3 depending on how smooth or smeary they feel. I fear the smeary ones will be very difficult to layer and blend, in addition to the feeling that you're pushing candle wax around the paper. (I know they're oil based but this is the best description to the feeling I can come up with.) Here's my quality scale and the number of pencils in each category:

3 dots (19 pencils): Superior quality, rich pigmentation, glides smoothly on the paper and leaves an even coat of colour

2 dots (38 pencils): Good quality, enough pigmentation, possible to layer and blend, no hesitation in using them. 

1 dot (15 pencils): Smeary and uneven result, and/or poor pigmentation. Use with caution in case it's a unique shade I don't have in other sets.

Palette wise I have mixed emotions. The purples and greens are great especially as I'm fussy with my greens and for example I'm not impressed with the greens in my 60 count Polychromos as I find there are to many cold greens in that set. The Raffinés contain many warm green shades that you're more likely to find in nature. The purples are also warm and rich and the yellows are surprisingly pigmented. However I find there could have been a couple more blues in stead of having so many greys. Six shades of grey are entirely too much in a set of 72. The browns and maroons are very nice, however to my disappointment, two of the dark neutrals I most looked forward to using turned out to be one-dotters. Otherwise the one-dotters seem to be mainly lighter pastelly colours which sort of makes sense, if the manufacturer achieved the pale shade by adding more binding material in stead of using a different pigment combination.

How these pencils perform on different kinds of paper and in different situations such as layering, burnishing and using with blending tools, remains to be seen. In any case I'm really looking forward to taking them for a test drive today!

Enchanted Forest, Swedish edition

A while back I purchased my second Johanna Basford book, Enchanted Forest. Most Swedish bookstores only carrry the Swedish edition but I never thought this would be a problem. 

The Swedish edition is published by Pagina, the same publishing house marketing Hanna Karlzons Dagdrömmar. Dagdrömmar has ecxellent paper quality and is overall a lovely book altogether, not only illustration wise but as a physical book as well. 

Enchanted Forest however, was a huge dissapointment. My Secret Garden is from the US but published in England and printed in China. It has to this day the best paper of any of my books. I can safely use any water-based media without so much as a shadow of bleeding, and it even holds some water on my Inktense pencils without getting all wobbly. So naturally I was expecting the same quality from the Swedish edition of Enchanted forest. The photos speak for themselves... you can clearly see the designs not only from the next page but from the next spread, so 2 pages apart. There is also near-bleeding jsut from Staedtler fineliners (and I'm a light handed colorist.)

I contacted Pagina about this and they said they'd look into the matter but I haven't heard from them since. I am keeping my Swedish Enchanted Forest as a training copy of if someone wants to borrow a book to try out colouring... and for myself I ordered the English version which again has excellent paper. A shame that quality varies so much locally! 

Bleeding :(

Visible design from 2 pages over

Art Therapy Scandinavia

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. 

Two "Kurbits" patterns coloured with F-C Pitt Artist pens

There are also other patterns in the book which is wonderfully varied. Some are folk inspired, others are a representation of typical Scandinavian landscapes, towns or traditions such as coffee-drinking :) Here are some more examples.

The left one is also done in the Pitt artist pens, while the right image is a WIP with Polychromos.

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 :

WHSmith colouring pencils - a review

A few days ago I started swatching my 36 count WHSMith colouring pencils. I was pleasantly surprised! Here's a review of these pencils.

- The pencils come in a glossy cardboard box with a plastic holder. I can see myself discarding this in the future as I tend to keep smaller sets of pens/pencils in clear containers. The design is lovely, with a dark grey pencil and colour indicators on the top. The hexagonal pencils are comfortable to hold and have a matt finish.

- The colour selection is really nice. You get all your usual primaries and secondaries that you usually see in a set of this size, and there are also some lovely and unique shades with a surprisingly good neutral palette. For example the dark teal one (last one in the third row) is one I see myself using a lot. The magenta and the brick colour are my other favourites in the set. The only shades I'm not crazy about are the two brightest yellows. They are not really pigmented and the next two yellow shades would be fully enough. But I've never been a fan of light, cool yellows, I'm more of a saffron yellow kind of person.

- The pigmentation is a pleasant surprise. These pencils are more affordable than the Staedtler Noris Club ones (at least in our currency that is the case) but lay down such a nicer pigment. You can get a vibrant colour almost instantly with very little pressure. The pencils are layerable and blend very well with each other. Compared to the Polychromos they lay down a bit more streaky colour and feel a bit more scratchy against the paper, but this can be corrected using a bit of layering. 

- The pencils came in the mail and although they were very well wrapped, it's not unusual for the leads to be damaged during transport. I haven't notice any broken leads and the pencils sharpen easily to a very fine point which they keep for a reasonable amount of time. As they are rather soft, I expect they will spend a fair amount of time in the sharpener, but this is the price for soft, pigmented pencils that lay down a creamy colour.

- I tried blending using two tools: a paper stump and a blender pencil. The paper stump easily gave the best result with these pencils. The gradient came out smoky and perfect, whereas the blender pencil mostly made a streaky, blotchy mess of the swatch. I can see myself using the blender pencil on very small areas but for anything of even the size of these swatches, a fine paper stump would be the more ideal blending tool of the two.

Conclusion: If you can get your hands on these pencils, go for it! If you already have a selection of pencils these will be great for a smaller set to take with you on the road or to add some new shades to your palette. If you're new to colouring, you may use these for a long time before feeling the need to graduate to a larger set or more prestigious brand. 

PS. When I started Lost Ocean a few days ago, I was going to use the 24-count Noris Club pencils for the whole book. But shortly after finishing the title page my hands started aching from the pressure I had to use and I was frustrated by the weak pigmentation. So I'm switching to this set of WHSmith pencils for the whole of Lost Ocean. Wish me luck!

Shutterstock books vs artist books!

When I first started purchasing colouring books I soon discovered that some publications were made up of compliations of Shutterstock images rather than displaying just one artist. In this post I am going to do a review of Shutterstock books, tell you about what to look for and avoid and also some of the pros and cons of this type of publications.

Shutterstock is a huge online stock image bank where anyone can upload their images (drawings or photographs) for sale. Shutterstock takes a large piece of the revenue and the rest is transferred to the artist. The upside is of course that you get a platform to sell your images where buyers can search based on theme or keywords. This gives a potential to be found on a gigantic market and there is a chance for huge sales. Many photographers make a living off stock sites; they take pictures that have the potential to sell to different publications. You know those illustrations in brochures of piles of coins or people shaking hands or someone smiling into a headset? Typical stock photography. 

Earnings breakdown of Shutterstock.

Anyhow, Shutterstock is also home to many colouring pages and some of the largest publishing houses have jumped on the bandwagon and are churning out dozens and hundreds of books based on Shutterstock compilations. This is a quite different form of publishing compared to "single artist" books where the publisher works directly with an artist to make a book containing images from that particular illustrator. Johanna Basford is perhaps the best known such artist but there are a bunch out there such as Hanna Karlzon or another favourite of mine, Jenean Morrison.
You typically recognize Shutterstock books from the fact that they lack the name of any one artist on the cover. They could be a part of a series such as the Art Therapy books (although there are named artists featured in series of books too). Most of the time the image sources are displayed as Shutterstock and sometimes the name of the Shutterstock artists are displayed as well.

The Cons

One of the main problems with Shutterstock books is that you may encounter dupes or duplicates of images you already have in another such book. Occasionally the same image can appear multiple times within the same book! One of the stock books I have has double spreads where one image is full size and the other is a slightly enlarged version. I find this a lazy editing at best and bordering on a ripoff at worst. I mean, just look at these two pages:

The first page the left side is simple an inverted version of the right one. And the second page is just an enlarged and a zoomed out version of the exact same image. Like I said, this is really sloppy in my opinion and a cheap way to fill a bunch of pages that you then sell for 8 euros. Compared to how much more work must have gone into Johanna Basford's books that sell for 10-12 euros, I find these books very expensive in comparison.

Another con with these books is the paper quality. Very rarely is the paper good enough to hold even water-based markers or fineliners. The same fineliners that work perfectly in Secret Garden bleed through in many stock books. 

My third problem with these books is I don't know how much the artist gets paid for usage of their images. Probably not that much. I imagine if a publisher strikes a deal with an artist, the artist gets a chance to negotiate the contract so that everyone gets a fair share of the profits. Stock images are often purchased royalty-free, that is the buyer pays a fixed price for the image regardless how many times that image is then sold on. 

The Pros

Shutterstock books aren't all that bad though, and for all the con points there is a pro counterpart:

- Dupes can be a great way to practice and make different versions of an image without the need to make copies. If you like your books the way they are and don't care much for loose colouring pages, this is actually a great pro.

- Stock books give you a chance to explore the work of perhaps dozens of artists within the same book. This gives great variety and ensures you never tire of the patterns, and also gives you a chance to try new styles of pages. You may not love every page but most pages turn out beautiful when coloured, even if at first you're not thrilled with the lineart.

- The paper is not a problem with colouring pencils which is perhaps the most used medium anyways. Every limitation is also a challenge at the same time.

- The artists who upload to Shutterstock are in no way forced to sign the terms and agreements. I sell my photos through Getty Images who sells them for up to 700 euros a piece of which I receive perhaps 10%. But without Getty the photo would never have been sold at all because I hate selling stuff. So it's a great way to have someone else take care of everything for me and all I do is upload images I took just as a hobby (so no extra work) and receive some money to my paypal from time to time. 

- Ultimately, both stock books and single artist books contribute to the vast selection of books out there, so that everyone can find their favourites - For example, in this book I really love the square size and that each page is neatly framed in a small pattern. I love, love, love framed pages! 

Having stock books as well as single artist books on the market also enables more people than just the most noted artists to benefit from this huge new market of adult colouring. 

Here is a page from the above book. The book itself is one I picked up while vacationing in Rome. It's called I Libri Antistress Fiori from publisher EdiCart.

In the next post I will present and review my personal favourite from Shutterstock books which is also one of my absolute favourite colouring books!