Mermaid in Dress Coloring Book Review

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Mermaid in Dress: Coloring Book Buy on Amazon US|Buy on Amazon UK|Buy on Amazon JP|Buy on Amazon Ca
by Ikuko
on 16 January 2018
Style: Paper: white tradestock, single page illustrations
Pages: 100
Format: Perfect bound, Soft cover

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Table of Contents

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Mermaid in Dress Coloring Book Review

I am a fan of Ikuko’s coloring books. Her beautiful Surreal Fantasy and Japanese Girls are full of detailed, grayscale pictures that are breathtakingly beautiful.

In December 2017 Ikuko had the idea of producing an artist edition coloring book featuring mermaids wearing clothes. Most illustrations that she had seen featured mermaids sans clothing so her idea was to dress them up in different outfits.

She had wanted to include heavy paper and other features that colorists like. To fund the book, she started a Kickstarter campaign for it and I was happy to back the project. Unfortunately, with Kickstarter, you have to reach the total amount of the goal you set. Ikuko reached $783 of the $3000 goal and accordingly had to cancel the project and produce a print on demand book instead.

Cover & Layout

Mermaid in dress has a glossy soft cover with full-color printing. The illustration on the front cover has been included in the book for you to color as well. On the back cover, there is another colored image from the book.

The coloring book is standard coloring book size measuring 8.5 in x 11 in.

Ancillary Pages

A decorated title page commences the book with copyright information on the reverse. This is followed by a decorated nameplate page (which is the same design as used by Ikuko in all her coloring books).

Layout

The illustrations have been duplicated in the book. There are 20 original illustrations. The first set has a white reverse page and the second set has a black reverse page. My only concern with denoting these sections by their backing page color is that ink may transfer from wet mediums to the page underneath. As always, I would use a blotting page in between pages, to ensure that there is no transfer of ink.

All of the illustrations have been oriented portrait style in the book and are well positioned and centered.

Illustrations are printed on one side only of the white trade stock paper.

Art Work

If you are already familiar with Ikuko’s artwork from her previous coloring books, this one may come as a surprise. In the past, Ikuko’s detailed artwork has been printed in greyscale with a lot of shading in varying degrees of grey to suit the delicacy and elegance of her artwork. In Mermaids in Dress Ikuko has abandoned the grayscale in favor of black outlines.

The illustrations in this book are beautifully drawn but do not have as much fine detail as you may expect from this illustrator. This gives the colorist the opportunity to add in their own details. It also provides larger areas of elements which could assist those with visual or motor skill challenges.

In my opinion, for the illustrations to really shine in the finished result, advanced coloring skills would be required. Colorists that are able to blend, create effects and highlights will be able to really develop these images and stamp their own personal style on them.

The artwork is dull black and has varying degrees of line weight as you will often find with hand-drawn art. Some of the pages have a sketchier look to them.

If you are wanting to practice coloring folds on clothes these mermaids will give you plenty of opportunities to do that. There is all manner of frills, bows, and ruffles on the dresses these mermaids wear.

If you are used to the more traditional scaled look on the mermaid you will only find a few pictures that have these details. I assume that the artist has mainly left the tail without detail so the colorist can modify it to suit the dress that they have colored. If scales were drawn in on all the pictures, depending on how the dress was colored, it may make for a very busy looking mermaid.