by Kinuko Y Craft
Published by Amber Lotus on October 17th 2016
Style: Perforated pages, single page illustrations
Pages: 80
Format: Soft cover
Goodreads
Immerse yourself in the enchanted fantasy world of Kinuko Y. Craft, celebrated contemporary illustrator, painter, and storyteller. Transcend time and space as you color to life these gorgeous illustrations of goddessess, angels, fairies, princesses, heroes, and mythological creatures. Craft's vast body of work includes award-winning illustrated books of classic fairy tales and cover art for fantasy novels.
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Myth & Magic Coloring Book Video Review
I hope you enjoyed the video walk through of the Myth and Magic Coloring Book.
Myth & Magic Coloring Book Review
Myth and Magic is the first coloring book by renowned fantasy artist, Kinuko Y Craft. You may be familiar with her art work, as it commonly adorns the covers of children’s books, best sellers and science fiction.
Her paintings are breathtakingly beautiful and her fantasy art is stunning. Her art has been exhibited around the world and she is the well deserved recipient of many awards. Her art is so rich with detail it reminds me of the work of the great Masters. I doubt that I would ever be able to afford even a small piece of original art from this artist.
This is why I love coloring books so much. It puts beautiful art into the hands of everyone so everyone can enjoy Kinuko Craft, Thomas Kinkade and Jasmine Becket Griffith to name just a few.
Often when an artist transfers that beauty to the coloring book world it does not work. In this case, it does. This is one of the most beautiful fantasy art based coloring books that I have.
Cover & Layout
The cover of Myth and Magic is white gloss with beautiful black and white line art adorning it of a beautiful fairy cradling a unicorn. Bronze colored highlights give the cover a sense of elegance. A black spine and bronze effect back covers meshes the sense of fantasy and elegance in this book. The cover art has been reproduced in the book for you to color as well.
The book measures 8.4 in x 10.8 in (approximately A4 size).
Layout
Myth and Magic has been printed on beautiful, high quality paper to suit the caliber of this art work. The paper has a slight texture to it making it ideal for layering pencils. The pages are perforated for ease of removal. All images are printed single sided. On the reverse of each image a little element adorns the page in line art. You could color that in if you wished.
All of the illustrations have been orientated portrait style within the book.
There are 40 illustrations to color within the book. At the foot of each page you will find the name of the illustration, copyright and a space to write your name as colorist of the picture.
If you prefer to color within the book, you will find it lays down flat quite easily for ease of coloring.
Illustrations
The art work reflects the paintings and other illustrative work created by this artist in the fantasy genre. You will find beautifully detailed goddesses, mermaids, dragons, unicorns and fairies.
On the whole, the illustrations tend to fill the bulk of the page and most of the drawings are very detailed. Most of the art work is filled with tiny detail that you may need to reach for the fine liners to complete. There are so many things to find within a picture it is amazing. Colorists that have minor visual impairment or arthritic pain may wish to color wash some of these detailed areas instead. The illustrations are beautifully balanced on the page and well positioned. I will need to use my magnifying lamp for the bulk of the coloring in this book but it will be worth it.
Most of the illustrations are framed with a border. A couple of illustrations do not have a border as it would not suit the art work to do so.
Approximately half of the illustrations within the book have a lot of background elements. You will find that there are sprinkles of tiny stars, beautiful flowers and land and seascapes in her images.
On the whole a dull black ink has been used for the line art with some images having finer details. The artist has created pieces of art for her coloring pages and as such she has not just outlined an image but rather created it with dimension, texture and multitudes of different line weights and effects. In some images she has used solid black to define and shape certain areas of the piece.
In addition to the mythical women and creatures you will also find other animals like birds, butterflies, owls and fish among other things.
Myth & Magic Coloring Book – Illustration Gallery
Click on an image to view it in more detail.
[foogallery id=”3861″]Where to buy Myth & Magic Coloring Book
| Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | Book Depository |
Speed Coloring Myth & Magic Coloring Book
The publishers of Myth and Magic have filmed their art director speed coloring a picture from the book. You can see the coloring in the video below.
Other books illustrated by Kinuko Craft
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Happy coloring x
Lea
Thanks so much for sharing! We’re very excited about this new beautiful book.
It is a gorgeous book! Probably the best fantasy book for colorists this year. Happy publishing x
Oh thank you so much. ❤️
We just posted a video of our art director coloring a page from the book.