Thứ Sáu, 30 tháng 9, 2016

Harry Potter Colouring Book 1

Harry Potter Colouring Book 1
This review is taken from my blog where I review adult colouring books from a mental health perspective. More images from inside the book can be found at colouringinthemidstofmadness.wordpress.com
This book is from my personal collection. Before I get on with the rest of the review I need to mention the paper in this book. According to Amazon UK, the paper for this book is supplied by multiple sources meaning some copies have white pages and others have off-white pages. The paper thickness apparently varies too. This means that my review will not be representative of all copies. Sorry about this but there’s nothing I can do about it as I can’t get all of the different types of copies. Amazon state that you cannot choose which type of paper you’ll get so it’s pot luck. I’d suggest, if you’re bothered about paper colour and quality to get your copy from a book shop if you possibly can, if like me, you’re housebound, I’m afraid you’ll be at the mercy of random luck. My copy is ‘off-white’, in reality it’s very yellowy and the paper is thin and smooth. Water-based pens bleed through on my copy so this is definitely a pencil only book and Amazon suggest this too.

Now that issue has been addressed, I can get on with the review in the usual way. Grab your time-turner, set it spinning and go back in time to relive all of the books and films from the very first one. This book is paperback with a glossy accented cover and a gold spine, it’s A4 in size and has a glue-bound spine meaning that a little of each image is lost into the spine. The images are a mixture of single and double-page spreads with many of the single pages having a thin border meaning that they’re not lost into the spine. The book contains 96 pages which are printed double-sided and, as mentioned before, the paper (at least in my copy) isn’t suitable for water-based pens and only suits pencils. However, it’s great paper for pencils and despite having almost no tooth, I found it really easy to blend and shade using my coloured pencils. You may not fancy the off-white, yellowy colour and neither did I but actually it looks quite like parchment so it’s less of a disappointment than you’d expect.

The images themselves include many stills from the films which are drawn very realistically so it’s very obvious who each character is and they look just like the actors in costume playing them. A number of poster-style images are included of adverts for the Quidditch World Cup and for The Quibbler. There are also lots of images of objects and magical creatures as well as references to each of the houses including their crests and emblematic animals. Some of the images are scenes, others are patterns, and others are random collections of objects like a double page spread showing Harry’s scarf, scar and glasses. All of the main characters are included, from Harry, Ron and Hermione, to Dumbledore, Hagrid and Snape, and notable baddies including Draco Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, Peter Pettigrew and the most notorious of them all – He Who Must Not Be Named – Oh go on then, Lord Voldermort. Lots of the most loved magical creatures are pictured too including, Buckbeak, Fluffy the three-headed dog, Dobby the house elf, Fawkes the Phoenix, and some of the less loved creatures including the dementors, pixies, mermaids and trolls. A few iconic scenes are illustrated from Harry and Ron driving the flying car, to Harry running from the Basilisk, Harry battling to get to the Golden Snitch before Draco Malfoy, to Harry’s final battle with Lord Voldermort. At the end of the book are a number of full colour pages of the images included in the book meaning you can either copy the colour schemes in those or pick your own, they’re also great for helping you re-live the magic of the films and get yourself back into the world of Hogwarts – as if any of us ever left! A few other images worth mentioning is a double-page spread of the main characters’ wands, a picture of Quidditch paraphernalia, a double-page spread of Dumbledore’s army and a lovely spread filled with Golden Snitches which will really get you practising and honing your blending and shading skills.

In terms of mental health, this book doesn’t have an awful lot of impact on it unless you’re a Harry Potter Mega Fan in which case it’s likely to considerably lift your mood and give you hours and hours of distraction and enjoyment. The images take a long time to colour if you want them to look realistic so you will need fairly good levels of concentration. The line thickness varies from very thin to thick but mostly it remains thin so you will definitely need good vision and fine motor control to get the most out of this book. The best part of this book is that it has coloured pages at the back which can be used to copy or give inspiration for colour schemes, you can also easily google the scenes, objects or creatures to find images of them from the films to work out exactly how to colour them so they look true to the film, or you can go it alone and try out your own colour schemes with bright pink robes, purple trolls and sparkly green dementors – it doesn’t have to be realistic, remember it’s a magical world! Some of the illustrations are very intricate and detailed and others are much simpler with larger open spaces so this book does have a variety of difficulty levels to accommodate your good and bad days.

All in all, the paper quality isn’t ideal but is great for pencils and does look like parchment in the off-white copies. I would recommend it for any Harry Potter fans but do look at the images below so you can see if you’ll like it. A number of people have stated online that they were deeply disappointed with the content and I have to say I was a little disappointed myself, I expected more scenes and few, if any, patterned or object-focused images but as long as you’re aware of this and are ok with it, you’re sure to love it! The only thing I noticed was missing was a really good image of Hogwarts, there is a double-page spread of it being shown through some trees but it’s a shame that it’s not a full page spread so that you can really get your teeth into it. Hop on your broomstick and fly straight to Hogwarts and get colouring the magical world.

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