Colouring - Alice in Wonderland

Ever since I first read it, the stories of 'Alice in Wonderland', and 'Through The Looking Glass' have amused me (I cannot say the same of the recent, and few years older movies based on the characters - but I shall say no more about that here) What amuses me is the seemingly randomness of the connections and the crazy reasoning she get's up to in the stories. Reminds me of the sort of thing that happens in my dreams.

Naturally I was interested to try the 'Escape To Wonderland' colouring book by Good Wives and Warriors. I got mine from Amazon. And although I cannot say I like every single page, I certainly like the majority of them and am enjoying the process of colouring the story in sequence, which I thought might be a different way to go about it, rather than the random way in which I colour through other books.

I took the book and a pack of 24 Crayola Pencils (I know right?!?) with me when I traveled last year and I had a blast. The pencils performed beyond what I expected, and together with a 12 colour set of water colour crayons (Caran D'Ache) I was set for any picture in the book.

The title page - I did this one before leaving home to experiment with different media and pencils to see how the paper would handle it. I really like the paper in these books. It is sturdy, and off white, takes limited water well and stands up to some rougher treatment just fine. I also like the size of the book, which was a deciding factor in my taking it along while traveling.

This double page spread is so far definitely my favourite page. I think the design is outstanding and all those flowers were a joy the colour. The solid black background really makes those colours pop. I often add a very dark or black to the background of a page, and really have to watch myself that I don't do it too often

Here is a page was done using the water colour pencils - sometimes I just need to get away from my usual bright, saturated colours. I also find it much easier to do the details with a brush than to have to continually sharpen pencils to get into those tiny places.

Here's a good example of a page that was a 'groaner' and I might never have coloured it, had I not decided to do the book in sequence. Now that it is done though I really like it and I must admit that it was indeed enjoyable to do. - Just look at that waxy crayola shine at the top!-

The 'Bayeux tapestry' double spread was a great page to colour...I did use quite a bit of gold gouache paint on this one. I would have liked to add more layers in the back, but the paper had had enough at this point, so I had to move on.

I'll be posting more finished pages at a later date. I'm halfway through the book and still enjoying the journey. I seem to be much faster at colouring than I am at taking pictures....