Fuerza Natural Coloring Book

Buy on Book Depository|Buy from Etailer
by Catalina Estrada
Published by Plaza & Janes on 16 November 2016
Style: double page printing
Pages: 96
Format: Card cover with fold out

Goodreads

"Enter in the heart of this original tropical universe, discover the exuberant symphony of leaves, flowers, crickets, hummingbirds and jaguars and follow your inspiration."

Table of Contents

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Fuerza Natural Coloring Book Video Review

I hope you enjoyed the video review of Fuerza Natural Coloring Book by Catalina Estrada.

Fuerza Natural Coloring Book Review

Fuerza Natural is the second coloring book by talented Barcelona based designer and illustrator, Catalina Estrada. Her first coloring book, Jungla Cósmica had a jungle based theme and this book follows a nature based theme, based on the tropics. You can see my review of Jungla Cosmica here.

Cover & Layout

The cover of Fuerza Natural is consistent with Catalina Estrada’s previous coloring book.  The cover shows black and white line art with dashes of gold foil highlights with a vibrant partially colored image.     You will see immediately from the cover that this is a tropical based book with tropical plants and birds on the cover.    Two cute little bunnies in black and white line art peek out from the side of the colored art, giving a whimsical  look to the cover.

A teal spine with lemon text complements the colors used on the cover design.

The back cover repeats the front cover design including the gold foil highlights.  The title has been replaced with a text blurb in Spanish.

The front cover design wraps around to the fold out of the cover which also features partially colored line art and the same imagery as used on the front.     Catalina uses bold, vibrant and vivid colors and these really set off her work and it makes it difficult to imagine it colored in any other way.

On the inside of the card cover there is  lovely black and white line art featuring flowers, leaves, bugs, dragonflies and butterflies.

Fuerza Natural measures approximately 25cm x 25cm.

Ancillary Pages

A plain text title page opens the book with copyright information on reverse.    This is followed by a reproduction of the front cover art without the artist’s name.    A two page introduction follows with text in Spanish.    This spread is decorated with flowers that you can color in.     A floral design has been printed on the reverse of this image which is followed by a nameplate page which effectively takes the whole of the page.    Any of these preceding pages would be a great spot to test out your mediums and see how they react with the paper and your coloring style.

The closing page in the book contains more information about the artist.   The text has been printed in Spanish and is decorated with flowers.

Layout

Illustrations have been printed on both sides of the white, medium quality paper.  All of the images have been orientated portrait style throughout.     In the book there are 54 pages that comprise  double page scenes where the line art runs to the spine of the book.   Although this is a notoriously tricky area to color, the binding of the book is very good.  The book folds down very well allowing you to access those areas.

You will also notice that there are 22 pages   with a pre printed black background.

There are a few images in the book which could have been positioned differently so they  avoided the spine area. This would have led to an overall improved presentation of the finished art.

 

Fuerza Natural Coloring Book Images & Illustrations

Once you have seen Catalina Estrada’s textile designs,  that are bright and vivid with complex color combinations, it is difficult to imagine her work colored in any other style but bright and bold.      If the pages were not double sided but single sided images,   it would be great to use markers.  However with the double sided images, alcohol markers will bleed to the other side of the page and damage the reverse image.

Catalina creates very elegant line art.   It is crisp and clear with a fine to medium black line.    One of the interesting things that she does with her line art is to use a lighter line of gray to indicate areas where different colors or blends can be used.    These lighter lines do not leave a visible black outline to the diagram, causing the colored art to merge with the other colors.    This produces a more painterly look when colored.       Colorists that have minor visual impairment may find these light grey lines difficult to see.    Most of the art work within this book is very detailed but there are a handful of images that have larger open spaces suitable for colorists that have visual or motor skill challenges.

Fuerza Natural is filled with beautiful designs of flowers, leaves, birds and animals.     Many of the designs are re-interpreted in a double page scene with an illustration on one side of the page repeated on the opposite with additional elements or altered in some way.   You might find a page full of bunnies and flowers on one side and then a limited image of the bunnies and flowers.

Speaking of flowers, there is a lovely variety of different types of floral designs within the book, which is always good to see.

As I said, when I reviewed Jungla Cósmica, to really appreciate this illustrator’s work you need to see her range of textile and stationery items to see how color is used and given life to the most mundane products.  This will  inspire  you to tackle this book, maybe even in the big and bold style that Catalina is known throughout Spain for.

Please click on an image to view more detail

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Where to buy Fuerza Natural Coloring Book

Amazon Spain

Book Depository

Happy coloring x
Lea

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