Colouring books

To create more variety in the products I'm selling at my stall, I decided to create some colouring books. These are very popular at the moment so I'd like to see how they do at the convention. If they sell well this could give me another string to my bow and something else I could sell as a freelancer that would set me apart from other freelance artists.

This will also allow me to produce some lineart of my work (to allow it to be coloured in). Lineart (digital lineart) is something I usually avoid as my style of drawing is very sketchy and scruffy. Doing this lineart will allow me to improve my rendering techniques by trying a new style of drawing that is very new to me.

Before I started creating my own colouring book line art, I decided to look at some line art in existing colouring books.





These colouring books for adults have patterns that feature a variety of shapes, and sizes to colour.

they also feature full page designs and ones that are surrounded by a white area.

Above are my designs for my colouring book.
I decided to have varying shapes and expanses of white to colour in on the different pages to ass a bit of variety.

To get the lineart neat, I traced over my original drawings in their full, A3 size and them shrunk them down to A5 (the size of the colouring book). This way the lines are a lot neater as youre not seeing them full size.

Because the colouring books needed a cover, I just re appropriated the image I created for my business card.

For my first attempt at creating a cover I used a white border effect that bled into the lines separating the images.
I created white text that also bled into the border. I underlined this with black text that displayed my name.

I didn't like this version. I decided to make a cover that had all the images on it available inside the book so the client could see on the front what they would get to colour in. I also didn't think the text looked very good placement wise. I also used arial as a font in this mock up and decided instead I wanted to keep the font on the cover of the book the same as the font on my business card. This keeps my brand image consistent.

This is my re-try at creating the cover. I learnt a lot from my first attempt. All the drawing included are now on the front cover and the font is consistent with he font on my business card, including the fact that the text is comprised on images. To make the text stand out, I used a semi-transparent back drop and a drop shadow effect on the text to make it look more dynamic.







I kept the back the same as the back on my business card for consistency.











After finishing the books. These were the printing preferences I chose:

I chose 300gsm for the paper weight so the book would look thicker and also so if someone coloured in the book using felt tip the colour wouldn't bleed through the page onto the image behind.

I also chose one sided pages to give the book more of a luxury feel.

I used un-coated paper to make sure the pages had a matte finish that would be easy to colour on.

I chose wiro bound so the books would be easier to colour on/in.

When the prints arrived however there was a problem, they had been printed on gloss (the company's mistake). See below for images:


Because of this I had to contact the printing company and request a reprint of my books as they were not suitable for purpose as they were.





















Luckily, the company agreed to a free reprint and sent me out some replacements.



I'm really happy with how the final prints turned out.

Even the printing mistake made me deal with contacting the print service. This is something I will probably come up against as a freelancer and it's good to know I can deal with printing mistakes now, it's a good sign for the future.

Eventually, I would make a plan to get my own printer so I can produce prints by myself. But affording an a3 printer and ink for a printer is out of my price range at this stage of my career. Because of this, it's good to know I have the confidence and ability to communicate and negotiate with other business' online.