Manic Botanic: Zifflin's Coloring Book Paperback – January 26, 2016

The media could not be loaded. When I first saw this coloring book on-line, I thought perhaps it was a new book in the Doodle series. I was happy to find out that it is an additional book by a publisher I really enjoy. There is also another Doodle book just published, so getting both books were high on my priority list.Irina Vinnik has created over fifty wildly imaginative designs which feature at least two of each animal she has hand-drawn into each design. The animals are surrounded by plants and are in natural habitats. In some instances, the animals appear to be the male and the female of the species while in others, they appear to be an adult and a young animal together. That these designs are hand-drawn is simply amazing. I love this look and look forward to the challenge of coloring these designs. The designs feature intricate and small areas to color. I think this is a good book for someone with a steady hand and good eyesight. Some of the animals included are: frogs, rabbits, deer, snails, jellyfish, many types of birds and reptiles and much more.The designs are printed on one side of thin non-perforated white paper. The binding glued rather than sewn but there is plenty of room between the design and the binding for you to cut a page out if you choose to do so. None of the designs merge into the binding. I truly appreciate that the artist has finished all elements at the edges of these designs and/or put a framing line around the outside. It makes it much easier to finish and have a good looking project as well as saving time, ink, and frustration. I wish more artists would do as Ms. Vinnik has done.All of my markers, whether water based or alcohol based, fine, ultra-fine, or brush tip bled through the paper. My gel pens and my India ink artist pens left shadows of color on the backside of the page. My coloring pencils worked well for their type (hard or soft lead) with the soft blending well and the hard leaving slight indents on the back side of the page. As the book is printed one side only, it is easy to put a blotter page below the page you are working on. Because of the indents, I strongly recommend using a more sturdy blotter for this book (chipboard, card stock, or a folder) rather than just another sheet of paper.These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:Markers: 1) alcohol-based – Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based – Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners, and Pentel markersIndia Ink: Faber Castell PITT artist pens (brush tip)Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo in the following sizes - 0.28/0.38/0.5/1.0 and TekwriterColoring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, and Faber-Castel Polychromos

I ordered this book because it was a suggested book when I ordered Enchanted Forest. I am so happy I bought this book! The pictures are so complex and detailed. It makes you slow down, think about the picture as a whole, and determine what you want to color and which shade you should use. Even with detailed planning, you still don't know until you finish 80% of the page if it's going to all work out!This book features one-sided pages, which means you can display the pages individually. But the pages are NOT perforated. I got around this by opening the book up wide and lightly running an exactly knife along the spine to release the desired page.I used prismacolor premier alcohol-based markers. I love the vibrancy of these markers as well as the solid and even blanket of color the markers provide. But as others have said, the markers bleed through the back of the pages. I get around that by removing the desired page from the book before working on it. I also have prismacolor premier watercolor pencils, but haven't tried those on a page in this book yet because I feel the paper would buckle of water was strategically applied.I am relatively new to adult coloring books, but I am a televised and published polymer clay and jewelry artist and dabble in paper crafting. The supplies I use on the coloring book pages are items I have accrued during my other artistic endeavors. But I find that I love the challenge of the pages in this book! I feel like it will be hard to find other satisfactory books once I complete this one. But I look forward to trying!

Another Amazon printed book, which -due to my inability to READ- I was not expecting. You get a rather large book, much larger than I expected, but it compensates for the detail in the images so you won't find yourself squinting. You WILL be spending time on these. This is not a book you'll do a page in an hour or two. Cute, realistic animals are nested in foliage, water, flowers, and all manner of swirls and lines to colour. Since it's an Amazon print you're getting pretty bad copier paper so be aware of your mediums, but the images are single sided and do not run into the binding so you can take them out if you want. If nothing else can be said about Amazon printing, at least you know your book has been made just for you when you order it.

Beautiful Book!!!! Possible “Fix” for the Poor Paper QualityFirst, I must say I absolutely love coloring and have been doing so for years, even before it became a “craze”. However, I’m happy that it has because now there are so many more book options from which to choose. I don’t care for books with geometric designs such as mandalas because it doesn’t allow me to exercise my “artistic” side; adding depth, shading, blending, etc. I prefer books with realistic or somewhat realistic nature related images. That being said, this book fits the bill perfectly for my preference as well as for those who like geometric designs because it has a little of both in every image. Love, love, love this book. Beautiful images! As others have stated, the paper quality is somewhat lacking.Now the fix when you:• Start coloring a page, really mess up one area and want to start over• Want the ability to color an image more than one way• Have a book with poor paper quality• Have a book with blurry lines• Have a book too beautiful you just can’t bring yourself to color in it!Before I start coloring a page, I’ll scan it and save it on my computer. Then I print it out on my preferred paper stock for the medium I want to use; watercolor (watercolor paper), colored pencil (drawing paper), markers (mixed media paper) etc.This way, I can print an image as many times I want and on whatever paper I choose.As for the blurry lines, I use a Sakura Pigma Micron Pen to clean up the lines before I start coloring.Hope this helps!