View source for Star Wars: Colouring By Numbers by LucasFilm

{{infobox1
|title=Star Wars: Colouring By Numbers
|author=LucasFilm
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Crafts
|summary=If you've had your fill of adult colouring books then this might be the next big thing: colouring by numbers.
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=No
|pages=128
|publisher=Egmont
|date=July 2016
|isbn=978-1405284783
|cover=1405284781
|aznuk=1405284781
|aznus=1405284781
}}
I've never had any talent as an artist: I once earned the comment from an art teacher that I would struggle to draw a straight line with a ruler, but it's something I've  always wanted to be able to do.  For a while in my teens I was seduced by oil-painting-by-numbers kits, which promised to allow me to produce paintings of horses grazing in the fields or boats at anchor in the harbour.  In fact all I ''really'' produced was a mess - literally ''and'' artistically.  I've had slightly more success with adult colouring books, providing that they didn't require too much skill, although I did succeed in establishing that Benedict Cumberbatch would not look good [[Sherlock: The Mind Palace: The Official Colouring Book by Mike Collins|with a spray tan]].  If I was going to produce anything worth looking at then I needed a great deal of help with shading.

Strangely enough I found it to some extent in ''Star wars: Colouring by Numbers'', where you don't get a picture to colour in as ''you'' like but a series of shapes (and some of them are quite small) to colour which - when completed - reveal a picture, or usually a portrait of a character from the saga.  Now that collection of crayons, or felt tips which the kids have been using is probably not going to cut the mustard here, as too many of the colours in any one portrait are remarkably similar.  At the very least you're going to need a collection like these {{amazonurl|isbn=B007QU7VIQ|title=Sharpies}} or these {{amazonurl|isbn=B014W286PC|title=coloured pencils}}.  It's a worthwhile investment as they'll last you for quite a while.

The paper is good quality and I didn't get any bleed-through from the reverse which does happen with some thinner papers.  On the other hand, the fact that you are working onto the reverse of a picture that you've already coloured does limit your opportunities for displaying the finished product if that's what you want to do.  But - I hear you asking - is the end result worth displaying?  I'd say ''yes'' with regard to the inanimate objects such as the X-Wing or Kylo Ren's command shuttle, but I'm less convinced with the characters, which could have done with more facial shading for me.  I did wonder if it was my lack of experience, but I found copies of the finished pictures at the back of the book and I wasn't a long way away from the official picture.

It was great fun and whilst more prescriptive and not as creative as some of the other adult colouring books I've sampled I found that to be quite relaxing in its own way and I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

If this book appeals then you might enjoy [[David Bowie: Starman: A Colouring Book by Coco Balderrama and Laura Coulman]].

{{amazontext|amazon=1405284781}}
{{amazonUStext|amazon=1405284781}}

{{commenthead}}