The Monster Manga Coloring Book - A Review

About two months ago publisher Harper Design contacted me with the request to review one of their new colouring books.

The last couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of testing with different types of media, such as coloured pencils, felt tip pens and markers.

one of my favourite pages in the Monster Manga Coloring Book

I have to put a disclaimer here, because I am not experienced in the drawing and colouring techniques that are often used in styles like Manga, Fantasy, and other Japanese drawing styles.
So I tested and coloured in my own way.

The Monster Manga Coloring Book is 24cm x 22cm  or 9.5inches x 8.5 inches.
It has almost 90 pages to colour.
There are different styles in the book, like manga, fantasy, monsters, robots, and other Japanese drawing styles, so the book can be fun for a wide range of colouring enthousiasts.
The quality of the drawings is pretty high. The artists who made these drawings are well trained and put both very detailed drawings and more sketchy drawings in the book.

The paper is pretty thick, smooth and white. My Faber Castell Polychromos pencils, which are oil based coloured pencils, perform really well on this paper.

Faber Castell Polychromos Pencils work very well on this paper.

My wax based Bruynzeel Design Pencils have a little more trouble on this smooth paper but still do well.

Bruynzeel Design Pencils

I also tested felt tip pens on some of the drawings. The paper takes it pretty well and you can have great results on this paper, however, the felt tip pens bleed through a little. When applied with a light touch you can almost completely avoid the bleeding, but this can be tricky!
I have to say colouring with felt tip pens was a happy surprise for me! I should use them more often!

Cheap felt tip pens

Felt tip pens bleeding through

I do not own Pro Markers but my niece does. She was very kind to allow me to do some testing.
The Pro Markers also give great results on this paper, but they also bleed through, much worse than the felt tip pens!

Pro Markers

Pro Marker bleeding through

Many colouring fans tend to tear pages from their colouring books to display their drawings. Because of that, I also tested how well you can tear pages from The Monster Manga Coloring Book.
You can take the pages out very easily. When you take out many pages, some left in the book will eventually fall out of the book by themselves, though.

                

There are a lot of pages in this Monster Manga Coloring Book that are very nice for both adults and children to colour, HOWEVER, there are a couple of pages you may not want your kids to colour.
For example, there is a drawing of a pin up girl and there are some drawings of ladies wearing very little clothing...
So I do not recommend this colouring book to (young) children, unless the parents are okay with it.

I like the variety of styles and drawings in this book which makes the colouring interesting.
There are some anatomical sketches in the book which give great insight in how the drawings are made. This is very helpful if you want to learn more about drawing people.

I had a lot of fun colouring this Monster Manga Coloring Book and I am sure many of you will too!

None of the pages I started colouring have been finished yet. As you may know by now, my colouring style is pretty time consuming. But as soon as I finish one, I will post it!

Happy colouring!

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