SS Illust Coloring Book - Volume 1 Buy on Amazon JP|Buy from Etailer
Style: color inspiration images, Instructions - Tips, Paper: medium quality, single page illustrations
Format: Dust Jacket, Glue Binding

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Table of Contents

SS Illust Coloring Book Video Review

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SS Illust Coloring Book Review

This gorgeous Japanese coloring book quickly stole my heart when I saw it online. The cute anime style art and the gorgeous coloring, made me quickly click that buy now button.

pictures of colored pages from the SS Illust Coloring Book

Some colored inspirational images from the SS Illust Coloring Book

Cover & Layout

A glossy dust jacket protects this coloring book. It features a colored piece of art from the book on the front. The back cover is very plain with a peach background and text in Japanese.
The actual coloring book has a glossy white cover with the focal point of the cover art in neon orange print.

SS Illust Coloring Book – Vol.01 measures 22.5cm x 23cm approximately.

Ancillary Pages

At the end of the book you will find a chapter full of information. There is a page with recommended mediums. From the pictures, it appears that the artist recommends pencils, liners, watercolors, and markers.

There are 4 pages of coloring tips which you can follow along by the pictures.

My favorite part is the 10 colored pages showing the colored artwork from the book. These inspirational pages are gorgeous! Hopefully, they will inspire me when I gather up the courage to tackle this book.

There are no blank pages to test out your mediums on before diving in.

Layout

Illustrations have been printed on one side only of the faintly textured, off white, medium quality paper.

The line art color varies throughout this book. Some lines are brown/sepia and others black or colored. The line weight varies too, ranging from thin to medium for the most part. There are some pieces that have been outlined heavily with a thick line. The style also is varied throughout the book which often happens with hand drawn art work. Some pages look far sharper and crisper than others that look a little sketched.

On the reverse of the image, there is text in Japanese. I assume this is the date that the illustration was originally drawn and perhaps a name of the page.

Each page has a fine border around the art work.

Art Work

This book features anime or manga style art work. The primary focal point is young girls in a variety of costumes. The concept reminds me a lot of the Lolita Fashion coloring book with girls in a variety of “costumes”. Some illustrations are pretty and sweet and others are a little sexier.

If you love coloring fashion and the anime style, this Japanese coloring book may appeal to you.

As well as the female focal point in each drawing, you will also find other elements to color. Cuddly and cute bunnies make an appearance, gorgeous food, flowers, and buildings also fill the pages.

The artist has an interesting style where you may notice that a lot of attention may be given to one or two elements in a picture, hair or frills but the rest is outlined. I assume that this is so that the colorist can choose to add their own patterns to the page and experiment with blending and shading themselves.

Some of the illustrations are so finely drawn, that it would be difficult for me to color them. Thankfully, there are plenty of other drawings in the book to choose from. Frankly I don’t think I’ll ever have time to color a whole book.

Not all of the illustrations fill the whole of the page and some have a wide expanse of space either side. The good thing about those pictures is that they could be completed in a shorter period of time.

At the end of the book, you will discover that some of the pages have different colored line art on the one page. Butterflies may already be outlined in blue and frills on the dress in purple. As this is only a small part of the picture, it should not interfere with your color choices as it would be quite easy to trace over these colors in your choice of color.

Although many of the pages are more outlined than detail pictures, there are still a number of pages that are highly complex due to the amount of small elements and imagery on the page. Coupled with the colored and fine line art, this book may be a challenge for colorists with a minor visual impairment.