by Nao Sakamoto
Published by Subaru on 22 June 2016
Style: double page printing
Pages: 96
Format: Dust Jacket
An amazing array of cute little critters and their life in the woods and their homes. Filled with whimsical images that is just pure escapism.
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Animal Friends and their Wonderful Home in the Woods Coloring Book Video Review
I hope you enjoyed the video review of Animal Friends and their Wonderful Home in the Woods illustrated by Nao Sakamoto.
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Animal Friends and their Wonderful Home in the Woods Coloring Book  Review
It seems fitting that I’m writing this review today for a coloring book that I absolutely adore because …according to my order history I bought this book a  year ago!  Wow!  In some ways,  it’s good to see that I’m clearing my backlog but it breaks my heart that this book that I love to bits has been sitting on my shelf for so long.
Nao Sakamoto, Â a Japanese artist and illustrator has produced a number of coloring related books including lessons on painting and her first coloring book, Â Grimms Marchen Fairy Tales.
Her art work is delightfully imaginative and filled with a wide variety of images that leads you into a beautiful world filled with whimsy and escapism. Â Â Â This is the type of book that I love to drool over when the chaos from the real world threatens to take over my land of unicorns and fairies. Â Hope you love it as much as I do.
Cover & Layout
A beautiful dust jacket that has been pre printed color on it adorns the coloring book.   The cover has been printed so that it looks like a copy of a pencil colored image.   A ram and a bunny collect  flowers outside their wonderful home in the woods.  The cover art continues on the back cover with a sparser image.    There is some line art here to color if you wished.
The front and back fold out flaps continue the cover art imagery.
A white glossy card cover protects the coloring book proper. Â Line art in blue with small images from the coloring book adorn the page. Â In order to color this, you would need a gel pen or similar in order to penetrate the waxy surface. Â Colorists that have a minor visual impairment may find the blue outline difficult to see.
Animal Friends and Their Wonderful Home in the Woods Coloring Book measures 25cm x 25cm approximately (9.8in x 9.8in)
Ancillary Pages
The front cover art has been reproduced as the title page for this coloring book. Â Â This is always comforting to me to to see as it helps you ease into the book by continuing the theme.
Two pages of text follow which are in Japanese. Â Â Surrounding the text are a variety of cute little animals including bunnies and some foliage to color in.
A 6 page visual thumbnail index has been printed at the end of the book with copyright information on the last page. Â Â These pages have cute little critters on them and other decorate elements to color. Â Â These pages would probably be the best for you to test your mediums and see how they react with the paper and your coloring style.
Layout
Illustrations have been printed on both sides of the off white, medium quality paper. Â The paper has a slight texture to it making it suitable for layering pencils.
There are 24 pages that comprise double page scenes. Â The line art does run to the spine of the book, however, the book lays down reasonably flat with some gentle pushing. Â Â Many of the single pages also have line art that abuts the spine area as well, but with some gentle pushing you should be able to color in these areas.
The book appears to be divided into chapters with each section denoted by a frame with text in Japanese in them. Â Although, I cannot read the text, Â I presume it introduces the animal friend that is the subject of that chapter of illustrations.
Animal Friends and their Wonderful Home in the Woods Coloring Book Images and Illustrations
Nao Sakamoto creates such whimsical art work that is jam packed with details. Â Â You could happily spend an hour poring over the page, taking it all in. Â Â Â As the title implies, Â Animal Friends and their home in the woods portrays a variety of animals including bunnies, foxes, pigs, cats and many others and their life at home and in the forest.
You will find the bulk of the animals have little outfits that give them an adorably “human” persona. Â They are drawn in scenes that also have a human bent; knitting, fishing, doing laundry or even sewing some new outfits.
We get a glimpse of these adorable animals and the life like world they inhabit falling asleep in the chair, enjoying afternoon tea or dressing up for the ball.
The scenes are predominantly home based but there are also many scenes that incorporate elements of the forest that they live in comprising trees, foliage and mountain caps.
You will also find a number of  pages filled with smaller elements that show accessories related to a particular image.  It may be snowmen, gift boxes and holly or framed portraits.   Usually,  it is a difficult for artists to get the balance of accessory pages, wallpaper and scenes right in a book.   In my opinion,  Nao has achieved this.   There’s a lovely mix of accessory pages all beautifully drawn that may be a welcome relief to tackle when you are short on time.
Line art in the book is a dull black and a medium line on the whole with fine lines for texture. Â Â The lines have a hand drawn look to them. Â Although the line art is very easy to see, colorists that have a minor visual impairment may find that some pages have too much detail for them, within the page to be comfortable.
Please click on an image to view more detail
[foogallery id=”9325″]Detail Level
Where to buy Animal Friends and their Wonderful Home in the Woods Coloring Book
| Amazon JP | Etailer |
Happy coloring x
Lea
Love, love this one! (Feeling better so I’ve been faux stalking your page regularly for new books. That’s ok, right? I mean, it’s FAUX stalking. Lol).
Had a question that I maybe tweeted to you-new to twitter so I’m not totally sure I did it correctly–have you ever used yesasia.com to buy coloring books? I really liked kinokyinuka (sp?), they were quick and cheaper than a lot of places, and free shipping, but I’m not finding a lot of the books I’d like to have, though that could very well be user error. Haha. Yes Asia, though, has every book I’ve been looking for and free shipping to the US over $39. I am just leery about it, and thought I’d see if you had used them. Thanks. 🙂
lol fake stalking is fine 🙂 I have used YA. I’m not a fan of their interface – (the design of the search and shopping cart) but it is reputable and they have pretty good service. I usually include where I buy my books in the links below each article. Happy coloring x
Love watching your videos on book reviews which encourage me to color and focus on better…I have severe degenerate disc disease in neck and lower back and 5 large bone spurs in neck and nerve damage in right arm along with 2 types of arthritis and also found several bone spurs in right shoulder …total depressed all the time
on so much meds right now which cause me to feel even more yucky …I was told by my doctor to pick a hobby
Thank you Joyce! I’m so sorry to hear that you have health challenges and that the medication is leaving you feeling meh. It seems often medication will assist with one area of a health problem but cause other issues in its wake. I know that coloring has helped me a lot with anxiety and depression over the years. I hope that it helps you as well. There is something about just the act of coloring, without thinking, that is incredibly relaxing. If I don’t feel like coloring, I often get the same feeling just by looking at the pictures in my books. I am not sure how painful it is for you to color, but you may find sometimes coloring digitally will help you. I am thinking of you and sending positive vibes to you. I hope that tomorrow is a better day for you – Lea (((soft hugs))) x