Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Granted it's a coloring book and no coloring book I've found is perfect by far, this one does really well. The paper is decent. It tolerates wet media applied carefully and with minimal water. It is also great for experimenting with watercolor pencils, watercolor paint and markers. So far I've only tested it with watercolor pencil, but I really like it. There are a few annoying things but nothing serious: - Ink transfers from page below to backside of page. This happens when applying pressure with colored pencils. Fortunately it can be erased. Being single sided makes this less an annoyance. The pages can also be torn out to be colored separate from the book to avoid this problem completely. (I just choose not to, because I want the pages all in the book.) - There is a bit of an uneven cut off at the edges of some illustrations. Leaves can be cut off, but flowers may extend past the point. It may be annoying when trying to color a clean border around the cropped edges of the illustrations. As an artist I work around them and fill in areas if I need to. - wet media causes the pages to warp and buckle. It's not the worst thing. Then again I am fairly tolerant of it. Close the book and keeping it closed for some time, they eventually even out acceptably. - Whatever tool that leaves the perforated edge on each page leaves a groove along part of the illustration. (At least in my copy it did.) Using wet media fills in this line and hides it. ---------- That said, I really enjoy coloring this book. If anything to practice coloring flowers for my own art. The large areas don't bother me. They force me to work on shading and coloring veins and creases. The details are nice. The paper tolerates quite a bit, considering it is a coloring book. These are a few pages I colored or works in progress. Mexican Poppy (oops, I ended up coloring like a California poppy) Sunflower with cucumber beetle and milkweed. The Monarch caterpillar is NOT included, sorry. I just had to draw one in to make the illustration feel complete. Also included are pictures of the media and example of how the page handles wet media. There is some bleed through, but very minor considering how many layers of watercolor pencil were applied and how much water I used. --------- Extra tip: Don't like the paper cockling - try using alcohol instead of water. 91% rubbling alcohol in a water brush still allows decent blending (though not as great as water) but without warping the paper as much. Colorless blenders intended for markers also work well (provided you clean them regularly on a scrap sheet of paper.)