The Creative Colouring Book for Grown-Ups

The Creative Colouring Book for Grown-Ups
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: Some pretty colourful patterns can be had with this adult colouring book, which is more for the casual doodler than some similar titles.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? No
Pages: 128	Date: April 2015
Publisher: Michael O'Mara Books Ltd
ISBN: 9781782433286
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Johanna Basford was not the first, and nor was she an overnight success. If you're salivating over the Enchanted Forest, having finished her Secret Garden, you are one of those many people indulging in the new/old hobby of adult colouring-in (adult perhaps only because her titles smack more of soft erotica than colouring-in books). The hobby is rapidly killing off Sudoku as the pastime of choice for many – either on the train or sitting with half an ear to the soaps. It's fun, it opens the mind to other thoughts in quite a meditative way, and it needs no instructions – much like, again, Sudoku, even if newspapers persist in telling us them even when nobody on earth is left to need them.

This book, then, originally came out before the huge buzz, in 2012. It's been reformatted, but the idea remains the same – it's chocka with imagery, designs, patterns etc, for you to fill in. They may seem to take a different approach to the norm, which may well be the making of this title, in that only a few are flowers, birds etc. On the whole they stick to simple patterns, either rigidly geometric, or flowing, fractal – even quite Paisley at times. Some are mirrored either on the page or across from one leaf to the next. Some are so good they’re repeated immediately, so you can attend to a different colour scheme.

The fact the pattern is there for you – created by a line that's sometimes quite thick and chunky, others subtly detailed – means you can get a page done fairly quickly. I'm guessing few people will indulge in shading the fields of the designs, certainly where the abstract tiling patterns are involved, which makes this book a lot easier for those of us who are, shall we say, more artistically challenged. That simplicity makes this more of an all-ages volume, and also means you can potentially pack this and just two or three of your pencils on the commute, and come away with something that won't embarrass you too much. It definitely suits the pocket or laptop bag more than the craft table, for it is a journal size, with an elastic strap to keep things bound and intact.

As a result of that, and of it being universally double-sided, there is no real scope for pulling sheets out and hanging them, beyond masking half of them behind a fridge magnet. It is, as I say, more of the throwaway thing once completed. It's a very pleasant, idling item, which will last a lot longer than even the chunkiest novels, but once done will be left for recycling. Unless, that is, you're the sort to keep your finished Sudokus as well…

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

Field Guide: Creatures Great and Small (Field Guides) by Lucy Engelman provides a much tougher challenge, and is definitely not one for the jolt of the workplace. You might also enjoy Beautiful Patterns by Various Authors. You might also enjoy Gorgeous Colouring Book for Grown-Ups.

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You can read more book reviews or buy The Creative Colouring Book for Grown-Ups at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Creative Colouring Book for Grown-Ups at Amazon.com.

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