Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Coloring book

Johanna Basford is the designer who started my hobby of adult coloring books with her genre defining book, "Secret Garden". With her newest book, "Enchanted Forest", she builds upon the beautiful designs that I have come to expect from her. As with her earlier book, I love that even the inside of the dust cover as well as the cover of the book itself give me an opportunity to spend hours coloring. There are so many wonderful woodland creatures to color, I could (and will) spend many hours with this book. Apart from the fun of coloring, the book is a quest for certain items. Some of these items "unlock" the castle door - which provides you with a beautiful fold-out four page design. At the front of the book, a visual list is given of which items are hidden as well as how many are available throughout the book to find. At the end of the book, there is a visual key that tells you which items are included in which picture. The book is a nice weight of paper but it is not perforated and almost every marker I have bleeds through. I can use my pencils and my gel pens fairly easily. As with most story/adventure/hidden object coloring books, the designs are printed on both sides of the paper. The designs are rather intricate and I find that I like to use my pencils sharpened to a fine point when filling in the smallest of these areas. I was so pleased to find this book and my new, relaxing hobby of coloring. I design needlework for my "day job" but that contains a lot of stress (deadlines, trying to perfect the pattern, etc.) Coloring has become my way of relaxing at the end of a day (with music in the background, too!) I love to watch television but I have found that ending my day with my coloring books gives me a much easier time of falling asleep.

Excellent coloring book. Watched flip through on YouTube. Wonderful artist author.

Such intricate beauty!.. Love it!..

Enchanting is definitely the perfect word to describe this coloring book. The illustrations are so whimsical. Each one is different. They used high quality paper so no matter what you medium you use to bring the page to life, there is no risk of it bleeding through to the next page. I bought several different coloring books by different illustrators just before Christmas. This book was more expensive than the others; but, worth every cent and more. It will hold the interest of a novice or experienced artist. If this is your first attempt at the new hobby of adult coloring, I would highly recommend this book or others in this series. At first, I felt the illustrations were a bit intimidating as I am a complete novice. But, I found it so easy to start on one small part of each illustration and then let my imagination go from there. I just can't say enough about how much I enjoy coloring in these books. I have been using watercolor pencils. I think I will be investing in more expensive pencils in the very near future. I wanted to be sure that I enjoyed this new hobby. My husband & I recently went on a "vacation" with his uncle who was widowed a little over a year ago. We felt bad that he no longer had a travel companion. Well, I pulled out my book & pencils every evening. I found that concentrating on which colors I wanted to apply where helped me to relax after some very, very long & frustrating days. It probably saved the relationship between our uncle and myself. Of course, the bottle of wine I killed off one night after a particularly trying day didn't hurt either. It's also nice to be able to put the book down when you are tired and not have to worry about where to pick up. Just open the book & let your imagination go.

Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Coloring Book is beautifully illustrated and incredibly calming. The detailed artwork and hidden-object elements make it engaging and fun to explore. Perfect for relaxing, unwinding, and sparking creativity. 🌿🎨✨

This is another great book by Johanna Basford. I bought this book because I am so impressed by her other book I own, Secret Garden. This book features double-sided, thick pages bound in a glue-based spine. This book is certainly not for alcohol-based markers as they bleed right through the paper. I use prismacolor premier watercolor pencils and Caran d'Ache watercolor pencils and they work very well on this paper. The only drawback to this book is that the paper buckles when I apply even a light wash of water through s water filled brush. I have to make sure the brush fibers are only damp and not wet when I wash it over the pencils to increase the smooth coverage of the pencils and bring out the brightness in the colors. The only negative thing I can say about this book is that, just like secret garden, it features mostly leaves in the drawings, and it can get tedious coloring page after page of leaves. Even the pictures of animals are made up of leaves, which I found disappointing. However, this is only a problem because I am currently working through secret garden and it is also 90% leaves. If I didn't have Ms. Basford's prior book, I would be extremely happy with the book. So I would advise anyone who wants a variety from Secret Garden to skip this book and buy Ms. Basford's Lost Ocean, which is such a fantastic book that my 14 year old daughter commandeered it for her own use. I'm currently planning on how to best ask my daughter for permission to complete Lost Ocean! But for right now I have enough adult coloring books to provide a variety. This book is extremely portable and because of its recurring leaf theme, it's easy to pack up leaf-colored pencils in a small pencil bag and bring both with me anywhere I might have a prolonged wait, like Doctor appointments and visits to the DMV. Overall I am very happy with this book and look forward to completing it and have a showpiece book to show people that do not know about or have misconceptions about adult coloring books.

Sometimes the simple things in life are best. Forget high tech, forget digital, or virtual reality. Simply taking a pen or pencil to paper and filling in colour to these beautiful and intricate pieces of art is all you need to relax and feel better about your day. The designs in this book are simply amazing and it's beautiful to, first, assess the drawing, figuring out in your mind what colours you want where, and then see the piece of art developing as you bring it to life with colours of your choosing. I'd love to see how others chose to colour the same pieces I've done. I'm sure there's as much variety and diversity in that, as there are people buying these books. When I first heard the concept of "colouring books for adults" I dismissed it as foolish. But then I looked into more closely what exactly it was, the magnificent illustrations that Johanna has put together, and the simply amazing pieces of art that you helped create at the end, and I realized this is something more than just colouring within the lines. If you haven't tried this yet, give it a chance. Even if you're a bit skeptical like me, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. And as is often the case, Amazon has the best prices on whatever colouring medium you'd like to choose.

Hermoso y de excelente calidad

Wonderfull book! I'm amazed with the details of this book, it is beautifuly done! It arrived very fast, very well also. In the picture the cover and the first page I painted. I'm totaly in love with the book!! Great job! Thanks!

Muito lindo!

Vorneweg: die englische Variante ist identisch mit der deutschen, nur etwas günstiger ;) Das Malbuch ist mein erstes Erwachsenenmalbuch. Es besitzt wunderschöne, romantische Motive, welche sehr sauber und filigran gezeichnet wurden. Von anderen, günstigeren Erwachsenenmalbüchern kenne ich es leider anders. Das Papier, welches hier gewählt wurde, ist eher von etwas rauer Natur, was die Farben insbesondere von Buntsiften wunderbar aufnimmt, es ist ziemlich dick, so dass Fineliner oder Gelstifte nicht durchdrücken und den Farbton würde ich als helles elfenbein bezeichnen. Anbei ein paar Fotos. Ich bin von dem Malbuch von Frau Basford total überzeugt, auch die passenden Stifte von Staedtler (Staedtler 157 C24JB - Buntstifte ergosoft Set 24 Farben) sind sehr hochwertig und wunderbar farbintensiv, so dass ich es bedingungslos weiterempfehlen kann.