Mori ga kanaderu rhapsody. Rhapsody in the forest.(Coloring Book Japan Edition)

Anyone who has spent time in the woods, especially with no other goal in mind than just being there, knows that nothing in the woods is regular or planned. The woods is "outside the box" in it's purest form. I'm not talking about well-groomed state parks with hiking trails and overlooks. I'm talking about a private stretch of woods where few people walk. Just such a place has been in my family for 100 years. I know that woods like the back of my hand. I spent full days walking there just to be a part of the rhapsody. Not fishing, not hunting, not hiking... just being there.A rhapsody is defined as a "composition irregular in form and suggestive of improvisation." (Dictionary.com) The rhapsody of the forest is tree frogs. It's the swish of tiny animals through the tall grasses. It is the music of the wide shallow creek as it ripples around the stepping stones, past the hill with the fox holes and the beaver dam. It's the plip of a minnow leaping for a mosquito. The creaking of the trees that rub their branches together overhead as you follow a hillside deer trail. It's the scratch of a squirrel's toes in the canopy overhead, a wren shrieking when you venture too near it's nest, the wings of the crane as it leaves the water for the air. It is the crunch of twigs under your feet. At night, its crickets and it's the call of the fox kits or the shriek of a bobcat or the baying of an owl or the pack of coyotes conversing in the distance. "Rhapsody" is the perfect word for it. If there is any force that tries to impose order onto the music of the forest, no human being can fathom it.This book is truly a rhapsody. The variety of images here seems to follow no real pattern, only a theme. The types of images and line thicknesses vary, as do the amount of detail from page to page. Some pages are coherent scenes, others are simply floating objects with no horizon lines. There are seasonal scenes as well as holidays: harvest, Halloween, winter, Christmas, spring and Easter and summer. There are a huge variety of animals and flowers and trees. There are single page designs, and about 1/3 of the book is double page spreads. There are a few "wallpapers." A very few pages are highly detailed and may be difficult for those with visual impairments, especially the colored page I have included in the photos. A few pages have grey or black backgrounds and a few can only be called "psychedelic," or maybe "Lisa Frank-ish."There are 44 double-sided, non-perforated pages in this book, including the title/copyright page, on medium weight, smooth card stock and two single-sided beige pages of slightly heavier stock featuring two postcards and five tags/notecards. None of the text is in English. The inner cover is colorable, as is the outer dust-jacket, both single-sided. The images do run all the way up into the spine, but it lays flat with a very little effort. It is glue bound, but I can't see any threads, so I assume it isn't sewn.A few of the pages feel like filler pages to me and not quite the same level of detail as others. Also, the paper is too smooth for comfort for harder pencils like Irojitens and Pablos, while at the same time some of the tiniest details will require harder pencils that can hold a sharp point. You can do it, (I used Irojitens) but your coloring hand is not going to thank you!Overall, I like this book very much, and I'm happy to have it in my collection.

The media could not be loaded. This is second of two coloring books currently available by the wonderfully talented artist, Kanoko Egusa. This book (as was the first one) is printed in Japanese but the artwork is universal in nature and in appeal. Once again, the artist takes us on an adventure into her imaginative world of animals and flowers – this time with an emphasis on forest animals. The first book by this author was laid out in almost a story book fashion. This book is more straight-forward with lots of designs that are related by subject matter but less so as a story.The 87 pages of designs are, once again, well lined up in my book, which I appreciate as a number of the designs span across two pages. There are also two bonus pages of designs at the back of the book – one which is two postcards and the other which is five ornaments size designs. The designs are very detailed with some intricate to color areas. The paper is a warm white and has the very slightest of roughness to the tough which makes it great for colored pencils.I am very impressed by the artwork by this artist. I hope that she will be publishing more in the future as the two books that I purchased (from Japan through Amazon) are what I hope are just the beginning of my collection of her work.The book has a dust cover in warm beige. It has front and back flaps with line drawings but the interior of the dust cover is blank. The outside of the dust cover has a linen-like embossing and has beautiful line matte black art (front and back) that can be colored if you wish. The attached cover is light brown with red line art designs on the outside and deep muted red on the inside.This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium. I will list, in the comments section below, the coloring medium I used to test this book and which I generally use in my coloring projects.87 Animal and Flower Fantasy Coloring book (includes title and introduction pages) plus two bonus pagesPrinted on both sides of the pagePaper is heavyweight, warm white, slightly rough, and non-perforatedGlue BoundSome designs spread across two pagesDesigns merge into the binding area. You will lose essential elements if you attempt to cut pages out.Alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper. If you use these, you will ruin the designs on the back of the page.Water-based markers, India ink and gel pens do not bleed through or leave shadows on the back of the page. I'm very impressed with how well this paper works with these wet mediums.Colored Pencils work very well with this paper. I tested both oil and wax-base pencils and got good results with both. My tests were for pigment lay down, layering the same color, layering multiple colors, and blending using a pencil style blending stick.

I love this artist. I previously purchased the English printing of the book but didn't like the smoothness of the paper for my Prismacolor pencils. The English version does have colored pages at the beginning to give you some guidance on coloring, but you really can't layer pencil on that paper. This had a dull cover but the paper makes all the difference.