Beautiful Music Coloring Book Review

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Beautiful Music: Coloring Book Buy on Amazon US| Buy on Book Depository|Buy on Amazon UK|Buy on Amazon Ca
by Hafapea
Published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform on May 9th 2016
Style: double page printing
Pages: 64
Format: Soft cover

Goodreads

A collection of 60 gray scale nature art featuring birds and flowers on lyrical backgrounds of sheet music.

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Beautiful Music Coloring Book Review

I really love the idea behind this book which is to print lovely images to color in greyscale over sheet music. I adore the overlay look whether it is over printed books or sheet music. To me, it has a real charm to it and I could imagine hanging it in a lovely country cottage or shabby chic beach house.

Beautiful Music measures approximately 28cm x 21cm (approximately 8.5 in x 11 in) which is standard coloring book size (A4). The theme of the book is birds and floral images drawn in greyscale and then printed on sheet music. I love the theme of the book and the concept of this type of coloring book greyscale meets overlay however I think a few things could have been executed in a different way. This is just my personal opinion, fortunately we are all different 🙂

The book has a soft cover and mine has a slightly waxy feel to it which I’ve noticed with a few coloring books lately. This does not worry me at all, as there is nothing really for me to color on the cover. The cover design is also in the book which is where I will color it. I think the cover design is stunning, a swan with some florals overlaid on the music score.

The paper is white. The paper is normal trade stock paper which is quite common in coloring books. Use a piece of card or paper between pages to avoid denting. I have two quibbles with this book. The first is that the illustrations have been printed on both sides of the paper. This is unfortunate in my opinion. Most books that are printed on double pages are in story book form – ie they tell a story through the artist’s eyes eg The Time Garden. Where an illustration is contained within one page ie it is not a double page scene or a story book it should be on one page only. If it is presented on one page then the colorist can remove the picture and frame it. Unfortunately, when it is presented on both sides of the paper the colorist needs to make a choice about which one to save. This may not matter to you if you like to color within the book. However, I really like to #colorwithapurpose. I like to remove my colored pages and frame, make other things with them (or sometimes just bin them!)

Greyscale images superimposed over sheet music

The artist has done a fantastic job of centering the images on the page. This means that all of the drawings are nicely positioned on the page with plenty of border where you can test your palette and ensure that you are not coloring in the tricky part of the spine.

The linework on the images is greyscale and the amount of shading and saturation of the greyscale makes it easy enough for me to see without my glasses on.

There are 60 illustrations within the book. I really would have preferred to see half of the images and the images presented on single sided pages. The illustrations are varied between birds and florals, which look absolutely stunning and of the same quality as the cover.

Greyscale images superimposed over sheet music

Now, we come to my second niggle with the book. The majority of the illustrations are lovely but for some reason a few have been added that do not fit the overall theme of the book. These illustrations are doodle/cartoon like and detract from the main illustrations in my opinion. These may have been added for some variety within the book by the artist. Personally, I would have produced two books one full of stunning greyscale and the other with the more doodle like images on the sheet music.

Whilst I love the doodle images I would have preferred them in a separate book

The book lays down flat well with some gently prodding. As the artist has ensured that the images are well centered you will not have any difficulty coloring all parts of the page.

Other than my quibbles mentioned above, I do like this book and I really like the concept of the greyscale overlayed and hope to see some more of it in the future in coloring books.