A Net in Time

Curriculum and book reviews, faith, homeschooling and more!

Colouring Book

Raven & Friends

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Disclosure: I received this complimentary product Raven & Friends through Harbour Publishing. Affiliate Links will be used, thank you for your support of my blog, costs you nothing to do so, and it is so much appreciated. 🙂

Oh, I can hardly wait to tell you what I have for you today.  Harbour Publishing is providing TWO copies of this fantastic colouring book for you today.  Two winners!!  Details will follow.   

But first let me give you a quick rundown.  Raven & Friends is a Roy Henry Vickers Colouring book for kids.   BUT don’t let the “KIDS” label fool you. ANYONE can enjoy colouring this book.  Thick pages, that are animal focused, with perorated edges, that aren’t just in landscape mode. These are images that if you colour them in carefully you can frame and display on your walls for all to see.  Or do what a friend of mine does, colour them in, write on the back, and send them off as friendly snail mail.  🙂   Make a friend smile! 

Book cover Raven & Friends. Text: review and giveaway for a lovely children friendly colouring book

The Basic Details for Raven & Friends

Raven & Friends is a A Roy Henry Vickers Colouring book for kids.  Put out by Harbour Publishing you get 64 pages, single sided, animal prints to fill out.  Printed on a thick paper that won’t bleed through, suitable for colouring with markers or colouring pencils.  The book itself is 12 x 0.27 x 9 inches.  You’ll find images of foxes, whales, birds, bears, insects and more. A whole plethora of wildlife to suit your fancy.  Not only that, you’ll get some lessons in artistry as well!  

Now just who is Roy Henry Vickers?  He is world renown for his work as a printmaker, painter, carver, designer, author, and sought-after keynote speaker.  A man of mixed heritage with a mom of mixed European descent and a father from Haida, Heiltsuk, and Tsimshian ancestry.  You can see samples of his work on his website and perhaps gain some ideas for colouring! 

Digging Deeper 

Learn to do art with Mr. Vickers!  Three pages of instructions to guide you through some of his basic forms.  Practice what you learn and maybe you can make your own art too!  I love how Vickers emphasizes how much he (and other artists) need to practice their art so they can do it well. 

The designs are simple enough to appeal to younger children, and yet interesting enough to appeal to all ages.  There is complexity in the simpleness of this native art form. In the weaving together of different simple shapes to form a more complex whole.  

I thoroughly appreciate that not every spot on the page is filled with something to colour in. This leaves room to add your own design, or colour more simply, or use pages are part of a nature journal.  Just what do you know about foxes, orcas, or eagles?  Add in the details of when you’ve seen a raven, butterfly, or chased a rascally squirrel.  Colouring books are meant to have fun with you know!!  🙂 

Imagination Flows

While most of the pictures are presented in landscape layout, some are not giving further height to images.  You can just imaging having a campfire while the aurora borealis flows in the night sky can’t you? 

As a Canadian these images make me feel right at home.  All these animals and experiences can be found in Canada, though some might mean taking a trip depending on where you live in this vast land.

As a former homeschooling parent I very much appreciate how this colouring book can be used in a wide variety of ways with a curriculum. 

  1. giving children something to do as they listen to a story being read
  2. being an addition to nature study, being added to a nature journal, or a guide to the animals around us.  
  3. as a start (or end) to a unit study about Canadian animals
  4. a way to learn about and/or practice first nations art
  5. a rabbit trail into learning about natural dyes and learning to create art with them
  6. (and so much more).   How would you incorporate this lovely book into your learning?

Some Companion books you might appreciate alongside Raven & Friends would be: 

book cover for Raven & Friends

The giveaway is simple.  Like, comment and share!  Share my blog post, share my social media (facebook, facebook business, or instagram).   Comment on blog post something that intrigues you or who the book would be for.   Only caveat is this: you need to live in Canada!   Coast to Coast 

Monsters and Heroes of the Realms Colouring Book

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Look who is joining us today! Kristen with a fabulous colouring book!  Kristen is from the blog Mom’s Quest to Teach.  You really should go visit her.  🙂

Monsters and Heroes of the realm colouring Book

Monsters and Heroes of the Realms Coloring Book is a collection of more than 60 black-and-white versions of illustrations from some of the more popular Dungeons and Dragons books such as the Players Handbook (2014) and the Monster Manual (2014). There are also 16 pages of full color illustrations.

The pictures are very detailed and intricate. For that reason, I would recommend colored pencils or fine tip pens once you decide if you want to color a Goblin Battle or an Elf Ranger.

Dungeons & Dragons ® has been around for more than forty years inspiring artists, writers, and adventurers to explore the forests of far off lands or caves deep and dark. This coloring book allows fans to explore within the confines of a book some of those worlds.

Among the black and white illustrations are several maps that would be ready for a game master and their newest campaign.

Personally, I have enjoyed coloring the pictures while role-playing with my family. As we take turns exploring or talking to non-player characters, I can color a potential future enemy like a mimic or an umber hulk.

The Monsters and Heroes of the Realms Coloring Book is a nice addition for any fan of D&D ®, fantasy, or adult coloring.

“A Mom’s Quest to Teach is a regular column covering elements of teaching and learning (with an eye towards homeschooling), parenting, crafting, and all of the discoveries, joys, and daily roller coaster rides that occur while being a mom.”

Art Series: Darth Vadar and Family, coloring book

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Most of the colouring books I do on this blog are for adults, but today I have a book geared at the younger set…. particularly those youngsters who like Darth Vadar and the different characters from Star Wars.    Jeffrey Brown has put together a colouring book called Darth Vadar and Family.

Do you like Star Wars?   Are you children lovers of this long-running series?
I have to admit, I like watching the movies though I am not a die-hard fanatic.  🙂

Both my son and husband have a firm fondness for this series and frequently rewatch the movies.   I am just delighted they have a movie interest to share in common.

In this colouring book, Jeffrey Brown combines normal family life with the characters and life of the Star Wars movies.

What do you think?    Would it be fun to go sledding with Star Wars Characters, or share a hot cocoa with Darth Vadar himself?

Or go
engage in a spot of friendly fishing…who knows who will catch the
biggest one…as long as they don’t use the light saber on the poor
fish.

Each page is one sided, which prevents bleed through, and if carefully done, would tear out to make for great refrigerator art.  (if the pages were perforated it would make tear out easier).

I appreciate that this book has simpler drawings that children can colour in, they can imagine (and laugh about) the idea of Darth Vadar playing the role of dad.  Or Chewbacca being one of the kids or heading up into a tree fort with one the Ewoks.

It’s a fun, fanciful approach to using Star Wars Characters.   It will appeal to some or … if they are like my lad .. “BUT MOM!!!   Chewbacca would never do anything with Darth Vadar!!!!!”   So depending on what your child(ren) are like, this may or may not be the colouring book for you.

One of the small gems of this book is on the inside front cover when Mr. Brown gives the reader a “Darth Vadar drawing lesson”.

Darth Vadar and Family, a coloring book.
Author/cartoonist: Jeffrey Brown
Pages: 96
Age range – 5 and up

Reviewed for: Raincoast books

Amazon.com: Darth Vader and Family Coloring Book

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Art Series: Fantastic Planets

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I so much enjoy my colouring book Fantastic Collections so when I saw I could review Fantastic Planet I was delighted!  This book is part of a series produced by Chronicle books.    This review is part of an Art series is part of an on-going series of Art books reviewed for your pleasure and resource.    You can find more books here and here.

 Book Synopsis:
Bestselling author Steve McDonald uses his unique photo-based
illustration style to celebrate the fantastic places, flora, and fauna
of the natural world around us. Here are inspiring, fun-to-color images
of lush jungles, teeming reefs, desert landscapes, fruitful orchards,
sun-dappled forests, spectacular waterfalls, majestic trees, tulip
fields, animal migrations, and much more.

My thoughts:

This is a GREAT colouring book.. seriously.
Fantastic images to fill in, that take the whole page, not just part of it.
High quality paper and images…wow… the images. 

I found myself hard pressed to pick which images I wanted to share with you.

 Back to back pictures that fill the page so you have no wasted space.   In the crease of the book one can find a description of what the image is about.

For instance, these alligators are from The Florida Everglades.   Can you see how an image like this might be fun to add to a study on Florida or Alligators?

These books are meant for adults, but I’ve known young teens who have done a stellar job with them.   Just a simply delightful colouring book.   The detail and imagery is simply a delight to fill in, knowing that by the end I will have a picture of a real thing.  

My son loves the tangle of snakes he discovered, my hubby the wolves and the landscape scences, I have a friend I’d love to send the elephants to, if I could figure out how to get it to her undamaged.  🙂   Some of these images, I see them and think, wouldn’t that be nice to add to a study someone is doing on Africa, Indonesia, China and more?  A nice add on for science and geography eh?

So if you like colouring books, my advice is to get this book, You’ll enjoy it.  Draw nature, explore this planet that we live on, and take some time…just for you.  🙂

 
Fantastic Planet: A Coloring Book of Places Real and Imagined
 Steve McDonald
 Chronicle Books
11.48 x 11.87
60 pages

 Reviewed for: Raincoast Books

Art Series: Earth-Space Coloring Book

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 Imagine a book where you could combine a love of learning, with a love of colouring.   Right now my son is big into astronomy…he’s having fun doing experiments, reading and listening, watching youtube videos…and now he can see pictures of what he is learning about in a softcover colouring book AND if he were so inclined…try to replicate what he sees.

Allow me to introduce to you a  new colouring book.   Earth-Space.  This lovely book is put together by Chronicle Books.

This book is beautiful.   The images of space that are photographs taken from the Archives of NASA.  They are breathtakingly beautiful.

Each picture is labelled so we know just what we are looking at.   We see earth from space, corona australis, the orion nebula, stellar snowflake cluster and so much more.

Some of the images are so close you could almost reach out and touch them, while others really point out the grandeur of God to me…that he could make something so interesting to look at, like the Caterpillar of dust and gas.

Each page opens into two page, the first page of the natural phenomena, the second with it broken down into simple lines.   This breaks the natural beauty seem more attainable to colour.  I have to admit though, I felt intimidated by the idea of trying to replicate the variety of colours presented.  BUT since each image is broken down simple lines, it is easier diverge… take for instance the image of rings of Saturn seen below…the colouring page does not depict ALL the rings, so you can use the colours you have at hand, or if desired…you could completely change it up.  It’s a colouring book… do what you want eh?

As you can see, each colouring page is done with simple lines.  Allowing each area to be coloured in sections, or swirls or whatever you wish.   These lines give you connecting points to the real picture so you can build off that.

Just a fascinating colouring book, that at first (to me looked intimidating) but as I continued to look through and think about it, I just found it fascinating as it’s different then other colouring books, it’s more free form with the lines just providing a grounding to base one’s work off of.  Mix colours, don’t be constrained by lines, and just have fun recreating.

I can EASILY see this being used in an astronomy class with students as well.  Even just to look at the pictures to show the beauty that can be found in the galaxy above us.  🙂


Earth Space Coloring book: Photographs from the Archives of NASA.

Published by Chronicle Books.
Pages: 80
Size 8.63 x 11

Reviewed for: Raincoast Books