Millie Marotta's Animal Kingdom: a colouring book adventure: 1

Therapeutic activity. I bought this for a friend who was sick in hospital at the time. The images are nice to look at and could even be framed if desired. Recommend!

This is the first adult colouring book that I have purchased.The paper is smooth, thick and white and the images are amazing!I understand from some of the recent reviews here, that more recently the paper has changed, but I purchased this a year ago when the thick white paper was used.There is a range of different types of picture to colour, as I have tried to illustrate with my photos. Most of them are on single pages, often with similar-but-not-the-same, or related images on pages facing each other. Some of the pictures have less detail, and the user is encouraged to add their own detail A few of the pictures are across double pages, so that part of the picture is in the crease, which I find very annoying.Having not really done any colouring since my school days, I started colouring a picture that I could experiment my technique with!I used the  Staedtler 144NC24 Noris Club Colouring Pencils - Assorted Colours, Pack of 24 , and found the best results with holding the pencil at an angle to the paper and working in light circular scribbling motions, and building in layers to create greater colour density.As the paper is quite smooth and the pencils are not very soft, the colour applied is not very bold, but as you can see from my photo the result is very colourful, and I have to say I am quite pleased with it, even though I was just experimenting. Using fineliner pens would give a bolder brighter picture, but you would probably not achieve the shading that I have here, but I have not tried that yet with this book.I have also shown a few pictures of some of my favourite pictures in the book, that I will attempt to colour when I think my technique is good enough!

After being recommended some 'adult' (come on who are we fooling?!) colouring, as a way to de-stress, I had a quick browse of the books on offer and soon noticed Millie Marotta's Animal Kingdom, which appeared to meet most of the criteria I needed. I was a little skeptical because of the ridiculously low price and wondered how good the book could be... I am very pleased to say that my worry was for nothing; the quality is excellent and I am still not sure how the price is such a steal?!Overall here are the things I wanted from the book (and on which, it delivered):- Interesting content - the pictures are vivid and captivating (in my opinion)... Wonderfully drawn and look great when coloured.- Complex enough to make me feel grown-up (back to that 'adult' colouring again!), without being so detailed that it isn't relaxing... I would say that whilst some images are more involved than others, overall most people should be able to find pleasure and a degree of ease when taking on one of the pictures.- Heavyweight paper - I wanted to be able to use pens, rather than pencils, so it was important to me that the colours did not seep through the sheets or smudge onto the adjacent page, and I am pleased to say that although not incredibly thick, the paper is definitely of an adequate gsm to prevent this from happening. I will add that a tiny amount of leakage occurred on the two pictures I have completed so far (I use fibre tip pens), but I think that could have been due to my novice technique of going over the same area too many times, and the parts that 'leaked' were not THAT noticeable overleaf.As I've noticed a few other reviewers asking, I got the book with the white paper, which looks fantastic.Thanks Millie... You should most definitely be proud of the wonderful book you created!

I absolutely love Millie Marotta's colouring books, and this is a must-buy for anyone who likes both nature and colouring. The images are so intricately drawn and so beautiful. Some pictures are left with areas that can be filled in yourself with a bit of doodling, although I know some people have ignored that and just coloured in the images as they are (I think I'll do that too, as I'm not sufficiently convinced of my artistic ability and I don't want to ruin such a beautiful book).Note added 31/12/16: just had to order another copy of this for my husband, as he's been watching me colour in my Millie Marotta images, with my lovely new Staedtler pencils (I'll be getting him his own set of those too!) and he couldn't wait to get started himself, so I printed off some free Millie Marotta images found on the web for now, 'cos I'm not letting him borrow my book ;-). Hubby says he finds it very relaxing, and is far more creative than his usual war games on his iPad!If you are reading these reviews, hopefully you are taking your potential purchase of a Millie Marotta colouring book seriously, in which case I would suggest considering the following comment, which I added to someone else's very helpful review:It may also be useful to point out that there are some cheap rip-off copies of Millie Marotta's books out there; I've come across the Animal Kingdom version and the paper quality is terrible. The real thing has 96 pages, and is around 25cm square, not 24 pages and around 18cm square (sometimes described as 'travel edition' when UK based sellers get hold of copies to re-sell).