Lucy Fyles - Colouring in the Midst of the Madness
The book itself is paperback and A4 in size with a glue-bound spine. The images are printed single-sided and do not enter the spine. The paper is a good thickness and bright white with a little tooth meaning you can use just about any colouring medium you fancy. My water-based pens shadowed and bled a little but this isnt an issue because there is no image on the reverse. I found it very easy to blend and shade with my Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. This book is part of a series and each book starts with 7 double-sided pages of coloured images that are contained within the book and then changes to single-sided black line images. This book contains images of all things Art Nouveau. It includes animals, flowers, leaves, fruit, and many more natural things. There are a number of beautiful, elongated flowing images of women, page borders, scrolls and banners, frames and much more. Everything is drawn in a characteristic Art Nouveau style that is really unmistakable. This book is unlike most other colouring books and is more of a collection of similarly themed images rather than a cohesive book that tells a story. Many of the pages consist of a number of small images grouped together on the same page that arent especially related to each other. To begin with, I found this quite off-putting because I love books that tell a story, however, the images are very nice and are great for practising blending and shading with coloured pencils and alcohol markers because the images are printed single-sided. This book contains over 190 Art Nouveau designs.
colourwithclaire.weebly.com
June 2015
This is an 80 page paperback book full of designs from the Art Nouveau period, including animals, statues, scrolls, nautical, LOTS of leafy vines, and more. I'm not a big fan of the style I have to say, but there are some interesting images to colour here and a variety of different objects rather than one subject matter. The illustrator, Judy Balchin, is a UK-based graphic designer, craft demonstrator and artist/illustrator extraordinaire. She has dabbled in the world of television, logo designing and even needle-felting, so has a lot of background and experience in the creative world.
Art Nouveau was popular at the turn of the century and is identified by its ornamental curves, whip-like lines, and asymmetry- some great characteristics for colouring book designs. If you're into blending plants and flowers, take a look at some of the pages in the book and notice how how leaves and stalks are heavily featured throughout. The paper quality is very good, thick enough for most non-alcohol markers and all one sided. An interesting thing about this book which I haven't seen before, is that the first few pages are filled with pre-coloured illustrations to give the reader pallet inspiration before they begin. I think it's an excellent idea as it shows you popular colours of the style and time period, which you wouldn't necessarily know otherwise. I'd recommend this book to colourists who have a passion for art; particularly sculptures, statues, stained glass, and nature. I'm sure fans of historical design would love it, as it seems to be very true to the period. Here are my finished pages. I absolutely LOVED the stylised typography at the back of the book, which I'm now using as my signature on all blog posts :) - See more at: http://colourwithclaire.weebly.com/blog/the-art-nouveau-colouring-book-by-judy-balchin#sthash.HRUZX2Xi.dpuf
