by Leila Duly
Published by Laurence King Publishing on January 1st 1970
Style: double page printing
Format: Hard back, Lay Flat Binding
Goodreads
"A new coloring book from Leila Duly's that is a celebration of a year of flowers. Month by month, follow the progress of the seasons with intricate illustrations of flowers, birds, butterflies, and other insects and small creatures to color in. There are two pages per week, adding up to a year's worth of coloring enjoyment"
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The Flower Year Coloring Book Video Review
I hope you enjoyed the video review of The Flower Year illustrated by Leila Duly.
The Flower Year Coloring Book Review
Last year I fell in love with the beautiful flowers in my Floribunda Coloring Book. Floribunda features beautiful, delicately drawn flowers in an artist’s edition type format. You can see my review of Floribunda here. I knew that Leila Duly would eventually release another coloring book, or at least I hoped she would. Of course, Leila Duly did not disappoint with her second coloring book, The Flower Year.
The Flower Year takes us through the seasons month by month. Each month is represented with its own beautifully decorated page. In the pages that follow, the flowers for that season and sometimes fruit and vegetables are incorporated. In addition, to the main theme of flowers, you will also find some beautifully illustrated birds.
Cover & Layout
The Flower Year has a hard back cover. It is unusual to see this in an English publication for a coloring book. Usually, it is the Swedish coloring books that have this feature or self published books like Magical Delights.
One of the first things that struck me about The Flower Year Colouring Book is that it is similar but different to Floribunda.
Both books feature a pink cover with black line art as the cover illustration. We are so used to seeing coloring books that have a colored or part colored cover art that this is unusual and is very appealing against the pink background. The cover art with its delicately drawn flowers and insects is a true reflection of the type of art that you will find inside.
The title is printed in rose gold foil on the cover and the spine of the book which gives the book an understated elegance.
Delicate poppies adorn the back cover of the book.
Inside, moss green pages serve as protector sheets for the coloring book proper at both front and back.
A sage green ribbon makes a handy bookmark and continues the understated elegance in this coloring book.
The Flower Year measures 6.8 in x 9 in or 18.2 cm x 23.5 cm.
Ancillary Pages
A small image decorates what is otherwise a very simple nameplate page. You would need fine liners and good eyesight (or a magnifying lamp) to tackle that image! On the reverse copyright information has been printed. A plain text title page follows which is blank on the reverse side. Either these pages or those preceding would be a great spot to test out your mediums.
At the rear of the coloring book there is a visual index of the images inside. Fortunately, for those of us that are not well versed in flower names the names of the flowers have been written as well as bird names, fruits and the like. This is particularly useful if you wish your coloring to be realistic and want to research the plant or animal that is featured in the illustration. The closing page in the book is the flower’s friend, a beautiful little bee.
Layout
Illustrations are printed on both sides of the off white, medium quality paper. There are 42 pages that comprise double page scenes within the book. Although the line art in the double page scenes does merge to the spine of the book it does not present any coloring obstacles. The binding is beautiful and allows the book to lay flat making coloring the spine area easy. There is only one image in the entire book, that may be a little difficult to color due to the very fine lines of the illustration that meet at the spine.
All of the images have been orientated portrait style throughout the book. On the whole the images have all been positioned well on the page to give a balanced appearance to the art work but also for ease of coloring.
The Flower Year has been designed so that you can color in two pages for each week of the month, if you wished.
The Flower Year: A Coloring Book Images and Illustrations
The Flower Year is an impressive follow up to the beautiful Floribunda Coloring Book. In The Flower Year Leila Duly has created such a variety of illustrations that would appeal to a broad audience but also with different levels of complexity. There are single images for when you are time poor and just want to color something small but still feel that you have achieved something. There are larger more detailed images for when you want to sink your coloring teeth into something. There are highly detailed images for colorists that love the finer things in life and there are some images with large open spaces, free of distractions.
There is an impressive variety of nature incorporated in this coloring book. Naturally, flowers are the main theme but there are gorgeous Wrens, Robins and Blue Tits as well.
In a lot of ways The Flower Year reminds me of a journal, where someone else has already drawn in the images for me. Many of the images are labelled with their name which makes me think of a botanist drawing flowers and making new discoveries.
Leily Duly illustrates with a fine, delicate hand and her line art has fine, black, crisp lines with minute detail.
Colorists that have a minor visual impairment may find these fine details int he bulk of the drawings too challenging to color.
Colorists that enjoy background effects will find many images where they can add some background pizzazz to.
Please click on an image to view more detail
Detail Level
Where to buy The Flower Year: A Coloring Book
| Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada | Book Depository |
Happy coloring x
Lea
Looks gorgeous..once (if) I had it, provably wouldn’t want to color in it. Only look at it , like I do with Ms Basfords books.
..
It’s a gorgeous book Connie …but with your eyesight challenges it’s probably a little too detailed 🙁 You could do color washes, if you felt inclined or just look at the pretties. All of the coloring books that are too fiddly for me, I just call art books 🙂 That way I feel guilt free about just looking at them x Happy coloring x