Beautiful Creatures (Huelish Greyscale Colouring)

Artist – Nicole Stocker
Pages – 106
Publisher – Huelish

 Available from Amazon via this link.

Cover

 

Book

This book is a very professional looking book – at first glance it could be mistaken for a book of photography! 

At 26.6cm x 23.3cm (10.5. in x 9.2 in) and 106 pages, it is a good size for slipping into a work or school bag, travelling with, or using at home.

The cover is a matte card, complete with a half coloured photograph and a muted title. 

The paper is a great thickness, archival quality paper with a moderate amount of tooth. This means that pencil will layer well, but also that water-based pens and markers and fineliners will not bleed. Alcohol markers will, so please have a few sheets of paper or card behind the image to protect the next page.

The spin is glue bound, preventing pages loosening no matter how much you travel around with it. The spine is very pliable and much easier to use than heavily glue bound books. The pages are also perforated, allowing for easy removal for any purpose.

The paper is also single sided and surrounded by a border – preventing the image from going into the spine, an annoyance for many colourists! The back of each image has a nameplate to allow the colourist to credit their work in the case of gifting or framing or simple removal. 

Nicole Stocker, the creator of this book, has also kindly included a page at the front of the book explaining how to get started with greyscale colouring. There is also an ever expanding area on the Huelish site devoted to greyscale colouring techniques. (http://www.huelish.com/grayscale-coloring-techniques)
 

My finished piece – definitely not perfect but it was a lot of fun and really fun to learn something new!

 
 

Images

Greyscale colouring has absolutely exploded in the colouring community, and this book is the gold standard for colourists wanting to explore greyscale colouring. 

Simply put greyscale colouring is colouring an image that is not just black and white lines and areas, but contains shading and depth in the image already. This makes the addition of colour much easier, as the shading is completed for you already. Greyscale colouring can be simple, with a large amount of shading and depth already added, or more advanced, with only light areas of shadowing added.

Huelishs’ first greyscale colouring book is an extraordinary example of greyscale colouring done right. They have taken great care in selecting images that will suit all abilities of colourists, giving everyone from beginners to lifelong colourists something that will appeal to them. The range of styles and intricacies will also grow with colourists – if you are new to greyscale like myself, this book is a great way to learn and hone your skills!

Beautiful Creatures is filled to the brim with animals of every size and shape, in greyscale format. Each image gives you the opportunity to colour not only the animal, but the scenery and plantlife around it. 

Intricacy is hard to pinpoint, as greyscale images can be as simple or difficult as the colourist chooses. You can choose to simply add colour to each section, or you can make it more difficult by choosing shades for each section.
  

The nameplate on the page behind each image! Such a helpful feature!

    

 

Health 

The images contained in this book are all nature themed, a great theme for when you may be feeling anxious or in pain. The theme, along with the soothing tones are great to help distract and calm you. 

The great part about greyscale colouring is that it can be adapted depending on your ability. For those who have trouble concentrating or holding pens/pencils, you can choose to do only one section, the ground, a tree, the animal at a time. 

This book would suit those with vision and fine motor impairments, as the images are designed so that the lines are not difficult to distinguish from each other. 
 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this review! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Batgirl xx

For more amazing animal images to colour, in regular colouring style read my review of Creative Haven Naturescapes here.

For another colouring style that is a little different, read this review of 1000 Dot-to-Dot Animals!