by Aeppol
on November 2017
Style: color inspiration images, double page printing, single page illustrations
Pages: 128
Format: Card cover with fold out
An illustrative story showing a girls everyday life in the forest.
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Forest Girl’s Coloring Book Video Review
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Forest Girl’s Coloring Book Review
It’s hard to resist this Korean coloring book. When I first seen pictures of it, I fell instantly in love. The beautiful forest scene and the sweet girl with the totally whimsical dog with antlers in the background – what’s not to love? From the cover you’ll see that it is only partially colored with textured but not quite, in my opinion, greyscale or underpainting art work. There’s something so serene and magical about this piece of art on the cover that it draws you in.
Aeppol is an illustrator and a writer that has been creating this art work for some time now. The Forest Girl’s Diary which is a companion to this coloring book has been created from a blog based on the diary of everyday life of a girl in the forest. You can also purchase the Forest Girl’s Diary here and see the blog entries that formed this diary here.
Cover & Layout
The cover of Forest Girl’s Coloring Book is white matte with the title in silver foil. What looks like coloring the line art with watercolor paints adorns the cover. On the back cover a partially colored image of the young girl surrounded by sunflowers has been featured, with text below in Korean.
Although Forest Girl Coloring Book is smaller than the standard size of coloring books we may be used to, it is packed full of illustrations with a thick spine. The fold out flaps feature small colored art at each end.
You may want to cover the book is plastic wrap as the matte cover does tend to get grubby very easily.
Forest Girl’s Coloring Book measures 25cm x 19cm.
Ancillary Pages
Beautiful color double patterned protective pages feature at the start and close of the book. The title page features a colored piece of the young girl, the star of the book, eating apples with copyright information on reverse. This would be the best place to test out your mediums. This is followed by 4 pages featuring a pink background and colored art work with text in Korean. I imagine that this is introducing us to the story of the girl in the forest …but I cannot be sure.
The coloring book has been divided into 3 parts – Part 1, The Girl in the Forest, Part 2, A Day Spent at Home, Part 3 – Season of Blooming. Each section features a colored background with a textured effect (but not textured paper) and a colored illustration.
Layout
Unusually this coloring book contains full color printing. On the left hand side of each spread you will find a small (approximately 9cm x 7cm) colored image of the line art with the name of the image and when it was drawn below. On the right hand side a full page of line art of the image forms the coloring page. If you wish to have a larger inspirational images, then I believe the companion book has full page colored images but I cannot say for sure as I do not own it.
The paper is smooth, ivory and a medium quality.
There are no double page scenes in the book due to the way the book is laid out with the inspirational colored image on the left of each page.
Each illustration has been carefully positioned and centered avoiding the spine area of the book. On the left of each page there is a finely dotted cutting line so you could carefully cut the picture out if you wanted to color it on a clipboard, worktop or frame the image. Of course, I could not bear to cut the book 🙁 If you choose to frame the picture that you have colored, remember you will also lose the colored image that would be printed on the reverse side. As well as loving the book, this is another reason why I would like to get another spare copy 🙂
Coloring Book Images and Illustrations
Aeppol seems to have injected some form of magic into this coloring book as it seems to have that indefinable something that makes you fall completely and utterly in love with it. It may be the “artsy” look to each illustration with a lot of texture and shading on the page. It may be the whimsy of this forest with the sweet little dog at the girl’s side throughout. Who knows…but it’s very effective.
You will find so many beautiful pages to color in this book – scenes of the forest, interiors with beautifully proportioned rooms and windows and under the sea imagery. There are pages and pages of whimsical and quirky scenes – little tiny fairies, dream catchers, girl swinging inside a bottle and even a Christmas feast. The little dog features throughout the journey as a constant cute companion with his antler ears and shirt. The contrast between the beautifully drawn imagery and the anthropomorphism is just beautiful and seems to flow seamlessly. There’s magic in these pages.
The line art although beautiful may present challenges for those that are visually impaired. The smaller size of the book means that colorists with a minor visual impairment may have difficulty with the amount of small detail on the pages. The line art also has the appearance of hand drawn with sketchy lines that may be more difficult for some colorists to see than the black, crisp outlines present in other books. The lines are drawn in a very dull black and, in a lot of ways, the book reflects an artist’s sketch book. When colored these lines will merge with the mediums used producing a painterly like effect.
The textured lines in most of the images are useful for colorists to show shading on the image.
There are some illustrations that have white space in the background if you love to create fancy backgrounds. Even without any background, I am sure each and every image would be magical.
Please click on an image to view more detail
[foogallery id=”11644″]Detail Level
Where to buy Forest Girl’s Coloring Book
| Etailer | Etailer |
You can also purchase Forest Girl’s Diary – colored images but not line art to color here.
Happy coloring x
Lea
Lee do you know why the little dog in forest girl has horns, his name or where I can read the story in English? Thank you, Mary
Someone did tell me the name of the dog ….but it is so long ago that I have forgotten now, sorry 🙁 I believe the dog has antlers and I don’t know why …. I guess that is just the way the artist likes to draw the dog! As I understand it, the book is not available in English but you can scan it with google translate and get the gist of it (it won’t be exact). Happy coloring x