A decent book for someone with little art background who wants to up their adult coloring book game, but not very useful for someone with an art background. It's less a book on how to use color in general and more how to get the same effects as the author.

I love this book! It gives your work the right lift to go from flat to fabulous. I would love to take a class with this author, but until then I'm glad we have the book. Your work will really pop, but none of the processes are so arduous to take away the pure and simple fun of coloring. Well done!

Ever since the adult colouring books became all the rage last year, I became curious about how to improve my own colouring skills beyond randomly filling in the blank space. Veronica Winters' "How to Color Like an Artist", provides an introduction to several techniques that helps to add some variety into one's colouring techniques.

Winters, provided tips and tricks that were simple to follow and easy to understand. Additionally, the terminology was explained in simplified terms which makes this book a good reference guide to improving one's colouring ability.

However, when reading the book, I had the impression that the book was structured towards how the artist's own preferences in art. By no means am I an artist, but my perception of art is that it is up to the one creating the art to do as they please. More specifically, to have fun and to do things out of the box, if they want to.

This book would be appreciated by those who want to have a quick reference guide to different techniques. However, for those that chafe under being told to do one thing a particular way may not enjoy the book as much.

I enjoyed this how to book. I am not an artist by any means. This book broke everything down. I felt some of the supplies were a little on the expensive end for this being a "how to" book.

'How to Color Like an Artist: Step-by-Step Colored Pencil Instruction for Adult Coloring Books' by Veronica Winters is for folks who want to take their coloring up a notch or two.

The first step is probably to have better pencils and art supplies. The rest is attainable with a little planning ahead of time. There are several step by step tutorials. Starting with the basics of shading and moving on to color theory and blending shades with solvents, this book will definitely make your coloring projects look better. And for all of the projects in the book, there is a corresponding blank coloring page in the back.

At less than 100 pages, this book offers some really solid art instruction. Each project shows what materials were used, so the student can try to match the color that was used, but there is also encouragement to try to use your own imagination for colors. I know I learned some things from this clever book.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

his is an excellent introduction to using coloured pencils by artist Veronica Winters. She recommends the best pencils and paper to buy, explains techniques, such as rubbing and shading, and textures and provides lots of step-by-step demonstrations. It is probably better to buy the printed version unless you are used to printing pages from ebooks.

Winters also provides tutorials and video demonstrations at her website. Most of them cost a small amount of money.

I received this free ebook from Net Galley in return for an honest review.

Loved this guide to coloring for grown-ups. Coloring is a wonderful way to relieve stress, and this book helps me do that and be creative at the same time. Great job!

A great book for a beginner who wants to learn to draw like an artist......

This book certainly takes coloring a lot more seriously than I expected it to! The very first pages are all about how you need premium brand name supplies and much more than just colored pencils. I was hoping more for techniques that would work with anything. There are some things that I think I may be able to incorporate, but I am not looking to make a large investment for coloring books that no one will ever see but myself.

The adult colouring books craze has been slowing down; but surprisingly has held on much stronger than the average crafting crazes over the years.
As such it seems we have reached the point at which just colouring is no longer good enough.
So now we are seeing a push to develop those colouring skills. As with any skill you have to practice, practice, practice.
This book comes with 8 colouring pages to help you work through the lessons. I don't know the paper quality as I only had an electronic edition but I can say that the layout is lovely and the pages are isolated so they have nothing on the backs of them.

Now for the lessons themselves. I found it surprising and a bit odd that the colour wheel, and what are (in my mind) some basic art concepts for using colour, were the last lessons. I would have moved these to the front and made them the first lessons.
Knowing how to use colour well and when is more important than the techniques of shading and blending.

Overall the information is solid and can likely help improve a novice artist with colour concepts.

This book provides a lot of good introductory instructions for creating beautiful pieces of art from a colouring book. If you've taken Art 101, the book provides review on the basics, like shading, the colour wheel, etc. However, if you are a beginner and want some good techniques, this will be a good resource for you.

RATING: 4 STARS

(I received an ARC from the NETGALLEY)

(Review Not on Blog)

This book is published by Dover who put out the Creative Haven Colouring books. This book is for those that want to colour in a more professional way. While they suggest more supplies than I want to purchase, I do like the tips and advice they give on strokes and shades. I have not yet implemented any of these into my own colouring, I am looking forward to getting better at it. I have a few books that I want to colour a bit better.

What a cool idea for a book! It's very helpful for people who aren't necessarily artistic. Beautiful colors and graphics!

This is a very informative book for those wishing to take their adult colouring, or colouring in general to another level. I love when a guidebook is written by someone who truly understand their craft, and this author does. She not only gives you tips and tricks to use from what supplies are best to achieve the best results, but also breaks her techniques down into easy to follow steps, allowing you to see how she does each thing individually.

This book may be more complex than most people who are simply looking to colour in colouring books will be looking for, the art supplies the author recommends are not cheap and many may not have the ability or desire to spend so much on coloured pencils and such, but the information is great if you do wish to make your pictures look professional.

This book is meaty enough to teach even the beginning artist how to vastly improve their skills and make some impressive pieces. The language is easy to understand and the book progresses at a pace that makes it simple to keep up with the instructions.

Overall, I was quite impressed with this book and think it is a highly useful addition to the library of any artist. It would make a wonderful accompaniment to any collection of colouring books.

This review is based on a complementary copy from the publisher, provided through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Good for those who are coloring enthusiasts,. Might not be the best book for a library, but more for personal use.

This is a clear, well-written book, which takes the reader step by step through the process of using color pencils. Winters covers pencil stroke variation and pressure, shading, creating texture, blending techniques, and the basics of color theory and harmony. She gives good advice about getting better results with better brands. My only criticism would be that the poor quality paper that many coloring book artists may find in the crush of the current coloring book market is not discussed at all. Use of strong pressure, texture templates and solvents may not be suitable for books with two sided design pages, for example. For those doing Zentangling, soft paper tiles might be better approached with her solvent-based blending rather than blending stumps, but waxy blenders might damage the tile surface. Paper quality should have been a part of the discussion here. (She does in passing mention using good quality paper for one's own designs.) Overall, there's a wealth of information for anyone seeking to produce more professional looking results.

I've only recently joined the coloring craze and I was looking for ways to up my artistry because my coloring looked so juvenile when compared to some of the pieces I was seeing on Instagram and Youtube. I saw this egalley available for review and snatched it up, and I'm so glad I was granted a review copy. It really is a nice reference guide for someone just starting out. It breaks down different pencil strokes and provides step-by-step guides for shading, blending, etc. As I had an egalley, I was not able to duplicate the techniques provided on the practice coloring pages that come with the book, but I can imagine that those help the reader tremendously to practice the techniques being demonstrated. I can see my self picking up this instructional booklet time and time again as I try to improve my pencil techniques.

I voluntarily reviewed an advanced electronic copy of this book that I received from the publisher, Dover Publications.

I have a number of books which explain color theory and the use of colored pencils; however, those books focus on drawing with the medium rather than coloring in coloring books. In this book, the author has explained a wide variety of ways to use colored pencils specifically for coloring in existing designs.

There are ten chapters in the book which deal with: Pencil Stroke types, Shading Techniques, Highlights on White and Colored Papers, Textures, Blending Colorings with Solvents, Blending Colors with Light-Colored Pencils, Basics of Color Theory, Color Harmony, Using Gray Colors to Create Selective Focus and Combining Mediums.

The author also gives a “shopping list” of types of materials that an adult coloring fan should have at hand. There were some suggestions that I had not considered in the past (such as fixative and tracing paper.)

I am very happy with the projects that are included in the book. I’ll include some photos of the finished projects so you can see what type of work you will be doing. There are line drawings of each project included, so you can follow the very precise instructions.

The artist does use Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils and Caran d’Ache Pablo Colored Pencils. She even provides the exact colors that she suggests for use in the projects so that your work will match that which is shown in the book.

The only thing I wish is that the book covered blending pencils and use of oil and/or Vaseline as blending agents. It focuses on solvents (such as Gamsol.) It would have been helpful to try the others even though, in the artist’s opinion, solvents are the best blending medium to use.

In addition to the copy of this book I purchased on Amazon, I was provided a temporary digital advance reader copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley.

Excellent! Beautiful and through.

I have been buying some adult coloring books for me and my daughter, Ashleigh.  Ashleigh loves adult coloring books and wants to be an artist.


I like how the book starts out with the basic materials that you will need.    I love the giraffe photo.  I did not know that you start with the background first.  Then, the leaves before you color the giraffes.  I love how the author used different techniques and colors for the same photo.

I wished there was more in this book, but other than that I liked it!
☆☆☆☆
I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.
Recommend this book? Yes! Author? Yes!
Read more from this author? Yes!

Happy Reading!
Melissa