Wildscapes ... A Journey Through Australia's Natural World

Wildscapes is an amazing book illustrated by Stephanie Holm, an actual botanical illustrator who not only loves drawing but adores our Australian wildlife and plants.

The cover of Wildscapes by Stephanie Holm

This book is not just a colouring book or art therapy, its a book of discovery and wonder! Wildscapes includes everything in this book - well, nearly everything. Sadly, there isn't a wombat or galah but hopefully this means Stephanie is working on another book :)

With so much to choose from, it can be hard to decide where to start. I started with the Tassie devil and then coloured in the page of honey possums before going back to the Tassie devil's page to colour the owl and scenery.

There are frogs (yay! I love frogs!), birds, a thorny devil, Boyd's forest dragon, platypus, feathertail glider, a Tasmanian devil and so much more - plus a wide variation of beautiful Aussie flowers and trees including yakka, gum trees and fungi.

Colouring WIP by me :) I do love this frog!

I've coloured using regular pencils but you can use watercolours in this book without worrying about the water wrinkling the page. Its nice sturdy smooth paper.  The wrinkles will smooth out on their own, but if you need them flattened more, leave it somewhere under a phone book. The weight of the book will soon smooth out the page again.

Adorable honey possums eating gumnut flowers

Tasmanian Devil and his friend the green owl :)

I've nearly finished the frog's page - it has a pink tree trunk, blue-green leaves, green lizard, red toadstools and so far, a white background. I'm thinking a mix of orange and yellow for that but I'll see what happens when I get back to it, probably will end up being pale blue-grey - coloured using the "scribble on a scrap of paper and smooth over the page" technique.

Hope you're all enjoying colouring and creating art as often as you can. The more you do, the better your heart and mind feel :)

Happy Creative Day!

:)

Jenny

PS... The following are linked back to my shop. Until midnight 22nd Feb 2016, there is a 25% discount for orders of $50 or more - storewide! You'll need a code, so visit www.shop.artbyjenny.com.au/collections/amazing-specials for details.

   

   

Colouring with Polychromos ... Tassie Devil in Wildscapes

So many things to colour, paint and create... not enough time! I think most of us feel this way. There's always been amazing books to colour over the years... Pixar, The Muppets, Winnie the Pooh, Tarzan and flowers, fairies, wildlife and mermaids! But now there are even more! This time promoted towards the adults that look after our inner child... more mermaids and fairies but also mandalas, zentangles, doodles, animals, flowers, gardens, forests and geometric anythings! 

The list of newly published books is almost endless... so I've limited my shop to just thise I truly love and think we'll gain the most therapeutic colouring time. Our time is precious, so its all about quality colouring time, not quantity. 

One of the newest books is "Wildscapes" by Stephanie Holm. Australian unique and diverse animals, plants and insects themed by habitat - from desert to rainforest to heathland. Its simply gorgeous. I love every page!

The paper lends itself to pencils, paints, crayons, gel pens or markers... anything at all :) but bear in mind if you use too much ink, they may bleed through the page. 

But there is good news for colouring with textas (markers, Chameleon Pens, Copics, etc)... if you spray a light coating of fixative on the page first, it helps stop the bleed through. 

I've yet to test it, but in theory it makes perfect sense. My can of fixative is solvent based so only suitable for waterbased pens. An acrylic fixative or sealer should be used for solvent based markers.

Tbis adorable Tassie Devil was coloured this morning using Faber Castell Polychromos coloured pencils. Its a small tin of 12 so its  was good to stick to the basics and mix my own colours. 

I even did a video :) http://youtu.be/nqYnOBnWJ9I

I've the rest of the pic to do now, but it will need to wait for another time. Thanks for reading my blog :)

Have a happy creative day!

:)

Jenny