by Maria Trolle
Published by Pagina förlag on January 1st 1970
Style: Perforated pages, single page illustrations
Format: Card cover
Goodreads
Follow Vivi, a young girl that lives in a wooden house far within the forest and her adventures looking for a friend.
Vivi is Looking for a Friend Coloring Book Video Review
I hope you enjoyed the video review of Vivi is Looking for a Friend the second coloring book for adults by Swedish artist and illustrator, Maria Trolle.
Vivi is Looking for a Friend Coloring Book Review
We first became acquainted with Maria Trolle’s work in her first colouring book BlomsterMandala. I remember when I first seen that book online how the hardback black elegant cover with cute colored image on it seduced me and it ended up jumping in my cart.
Vivi is looking for a friend is Maria’s second colouring book. The same book has also been created as a children’s book which contains images from this colouring book and a story in Swedish. The colouring book contains more images than are in the children’s book. Colorist need to take care when ordering online to ensure that they are ordering the malarbok when purchasing this colouring book rather than the children’s story book.
Cover & Layout
Unlike Blomster Mandala Vivi is looking for a friend is a card cover colouring book rather than a hardback colouring book. The cover contains an illustration from the book of a young Vivi in a woodland filled with cute critters and imaginary characters. Part of the art work is coloured and there is some line art that you could color with perhaps alcohol markers to penetrate the matte laminate cover.
The design wraps around the spine of book and to the back cover. Just from looking at the front cover we can see that this will be a “cute” colouring boook.
The inside card cover features line art of butterflies carrying lanterns and an illustration of young Vivi. The inside of the back cover features cute critters on a leaf.
The book measures 25.5 cm x 21.5 cm.
Ancillary Pages
An elaborate title page opens the book. The title is surrounded by flowers and cute characters and the title is presented in banner format.
Layout
The illustrations are printed on ivory medium quality to heavy paper. There is only one illustration per page so colourists can use what medium you wish to. All of the illustrations are presented in portrait format. There are eight illustrations in the book that have a pre printed black background.
Illustrations
Vivi is looking for a friend tells the cute story of a young girl who lives in a forest and the adventures that she has. As you would expect from a coloring book based on a children’s bookset in the forest the pages are filled with cute and quirky characters. Maria Trolle is very well known for her love of nature as we discovered with the first colouring book Blomster Mandala.
This book features the journey of Vivi The book is cute and whimsical and colourists that like to color nature based images as well as enjoy cute and quirky will be enchanted by this book.
Maria tends to use the whole of the page for all designs. While some of the work does abut the spine of the book as the pages are perforated colorists that experience difficulty in colouring these areas can simply remove the page from the book.
The line weight ranges from fine to medium and is crisp black and easy to see. There are some illustrations that may be challenging if you suffer from minor visual impairment. However there are a number of images that have large open spaces that should not prevent you from colouring. Maria tends to use a number of dots in her work, pointillism which is helpful in guiding colorists for shading and cast shadows.
The cover art has been included in the book for you to color.
You will follow Vivi as she goes on a magical journey through the air, the woods and the sea. It is a quirky set of illustrations that make me very curious as to what the story is about (and wish that I could read Swedish)
A number of the illustrations have large areas of white space which would be suitable for background pizzazz to be added if you wished.
Some of the floral images remind me of Maria’s set of cards, “I bring you flowers” and Blomster Mandala. Although there are not enough of these in the book to detract from the main theme of the book.
Where to buy Vivi is Looking for a Friend Coloring Book
A Swedish edition only of this book has been released. If you wish to purchase it you can do so online from PenStore in Sweden. I use this shop often when purchasing colouring books and always find the service to be excellent and efficient.
Happy coloring x
Lea
On 1 june 2017 there will be a Dutch release of this book. It has an other title “Droomreis” (Dream journey). You can pre-order it on amazon.de , bookdepository.com and in the Nethetlands of course. I have seen the Dutch cover, but I like the Swedish cover better. I was planning to buy it from printworksmarket.com, because I want to buy to other books “Sagor och sagner” by Emelie Lidehall Oberg and “Mythologiska vasen” together with “Vivi coloring book”, because than I will have free shipping. So now I will have to think about it if I want to buy the Swedish or Dutch version.
On 1 june 2017 their will be a Durch release of this book. You can pre-order it on amazon.de , bookdepository.com and of course in the Netherlands. The Dutch version has an other title “Droomreis” (Dream Journey) and they changed the cover. I like Swedish cover more than the Dutch cover. I was planning to buy the book on the printworksmarket.com, because I also want to 2 other Swedish coloring books, when I buy 3 books I get free shipping. I need to think which version I want to buy.
Sincerely,
Fam