Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When I saw the previews of this Bob Ross coloring book, I was disappointed. The pages are rough sketches really. Then when it arrived, it was just as disappointing. But as I flipped through the book, I happened on the thumbnail color guides, and it was... AHA! The rough sketches are exactly that – what you would rough out on a canvas with charcoal or a pencil. But taken with the color guide as inspiration, you can see where to zoom off into the Wild Art Yonder. If you are comfortable with that – zooming off! – and you like simple almost iconic landscapes, you’ll enjoy this book. It will be challenging to get that flowing painterly look with pencils or markers, but that should be all part of the fun. If you don't step outside of your comfort zone, it will be hard to encounter those Happy Little Accidents that are so much of the Bob Ross experience. It would be interesting to see how some of these looked with oil pastel or soft pastels. Check out how much white some of the thumbnails have and leave blank or very light areas on your page to get that look. On the other hand, if you like very directed designs to color and don't like having to make a lot of decisions on the fly, this may not be the book for you. The pages are single-sided an unperforated, although there are Bob Ross quotes on the back of many of them. There are more than 75 drawings for your creative efforts. It’s irritating that none of the paintings in the thumbnail color guide are identified so you could google them for a larger image for reference. The description of the book says it includes a gallery of Bob’s original artwork, but the reproductions are truly thumbnail sized, so that is a bit of a misrepresentation there.