by Renia Metallinou, Bethan Fanine
Published by Doubleday Books for Young Readers on July 5th 2016
Style: double page printing
Pages: 80
Format: Card cover with fold out, Glue & Stitched
Goodreads
Bring to life the classic tale of Romeo and Juliet in this wonderfully romantic coloring book. Beautifully detailed linework combines with iconic quotations to perfectly capture the passion and tragedy of literature's greatest pair of star-crossed lovers. Features a gorgeous foiled cover!
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Romeo & Juliet: A Colouring Classic – Video Review
I hope you enjoyed the video review above of Romeo and Juliet, coloring book.
Cover and Layout
Romeo and Juliet Coloring Book has been very well made. The cover is white matte card with beautiful copper highlights. The main highlights being on the title and the silhouettes of the fated couple. Additional highlights are on other elements. the foil always gives books a special touch and this is true in the case of Romeo and Juliet. The spine also benefits from wording and elements being in copper highlights as well. The balance of line art on the front and back cover can all be colored in. The back cover doe snot feature any copper highlights.
As the cover is matte it makes it super easy to color in with any medium you choose. However, because it is matte it does tend to show the dirt a bit and does not resist day to day wear in the same way as a gloss cover does.
The cover art is very attractive with an arrangement of elements that sets the background for the classic story by William Shakespeare. You have poison to color and daggers but also beautiful roses and even a cute little cherub and heart on the back cover. the fold out flaps on the front feature a few elements to color and the back has a larger image of presumably Verona to color in. Sadly, there is nothing to color on the inside of the cover but plenty of pages to color in the book.
The book measures 25cm x 25cm (approximately 10 in x 10 in)
Ancillary Pages
A title page framed with elements to color starts the book with copyright detail on the reverse. A short one page introduction follows leading us into the romantic story of Romeo and Juliet. These pages would be a great spot to test out your mediums and see how they react with the paper and your coloring style.
Layout
The illustrations have all been printed on both sides of the white medium to heavy quality paper. Whilst the paper is thicker, in comparison, to most coloring pages I feel on a daily basis 🙂 it is still not strong enough to bear alcohol based markers, without bleed through.
Images have all been orientated portrait style throughout the book. This classic by William Shakespeare is illustrated in story book style and along the pages, snippets of the play, are interwoven with the images to give you context for the imagery.
Romeo and Juliet Coloring Book Illustration Gallery
Please click on the images to view in detail
[foogallery id=”3656″]Illustrations
The illustrations have been drawn in a fine to medium line weight. The dull black lines are on the whole easy to see although some have a more faded appearance to them which tends to add charm to the illustration.
The artist has provided enough detail in the images so you can sense the era of Romeo and Juliet and have a sense of the history without including so much intricate detail that it becomes difficult to color.
You will find buildings to color, emblems, florals, people, masks, musical instruments (something we don’t often see represented in coloring books) and gorgeous birds. There are a number of pages that continue the story but comprise filler type material: stars, fireworks, leaves for example. I class these types of pages as “filler” because they help join the story together whilst not being a scene in the story. Often these are a good idea to give some variety to the colorist when coloring their way through the book, as long as these pages are secondary to the primary story book pages of the book.
What I really like about this book is that the drawings have not been overly cluttered with detail. This means that there is surrounding white space around images making it easy to “read” and color in.
For lovers of background effects there are many pages that would benefit from some pizzazz added with snazzy colors and the like. There are 5 pages in the book that have a pre printed black background
There are some beautiful images in the book of Romeo and Juliet that fans of Shakespeare will love.
Out of the book there are 50 pages that comprise double page scenes and the balance being single page scenes. The illustrations do tend to run to the spine of book but the book lays flat with gentle prodding. I feel that some of the illustrations could have been presented as a single page illustration rather than a double page scene by changing the positioning of the image. This would make it easier to color the piece and frame, if the colorist wished. Some of the illustrations have the main illustrations on one page and on the facing page text intertwined with elements. In reality these could have been separate pages, without losing any of the main art work.
There is a nice variety of images within the book with some images that have tighter packed, smaller details and some images with larger spaces to color. This is a book that you could use no matter your skill level.
Where to buy Romeo and Juliet Coloring Book
Amazon US Amazon Ca Amazon UKHappy coloring x
Lea
Thank you for sharing this lovely book! I passed this up at the store the other day and I am now regretting that! It is amusing how I keep buying new books even though I have more then enough to color already! Take care!
It is lovely! The paper is wonderful! If you are a Jane Austen fan I also have the Pride and Prejudice book in my stack 🙂 So many beautiful coloring books! Happy coloring x