Magical Jungle

Another Johanna Basford masterpiece in my opinion. I have her other books, and couldn't wait to get this one, and I'm not disappointed. It's turning out to be my favourite one, next to the Enchanted Forest. The paper is beautiful. It's not pure white, like in The Lost Ocean, and it's not as cream as in The Enchanted Forest , and Secret Garden, it's somewhere in between. It can take a variety of mediums. I've used pencil and watercolour paint. The paper is thick enough to take watercolour, but does buckle slightly as you'd expect, but not so much that it has ruined the boo and has flattened off after placing it under another heavy book. . The pictures are filled with flowers, beautiful foliage and exotic animals, and birds. it is a must buy for anyone who has enjoyed Johanna's previous books. Can't wait for the next one! I've included a few photos of finished works using different mediums. The first one of the toucan, i used Prismacolor pencils. The butterfly, i used Faber Castell Polychromos penciks, and the next i used watercolour paints

Lovely book, great quality on first glance, and much less infuriating to those of us more visually challenged than the complex tiny patterns in the Oceans book by the same author. I love Joanna Basfords books because the quality of the paper has always been so good - a real pleasure to colour, unlike her competitors. For that reason I was so looking forward to colouring this - and that's when the problems started. Unfortunately the paper ( whilst it feels thick) just doesn't seem as good as in her earlier books. Firstly as mentioned by another reviewer, indentation comes through. I've never had this with any of the other books of hers, but if you don't colour on a really solid base your pencil indentations come through strongly and makes the image on the other side almost impossible to colour. I've been able to colour the rest of her books on my lap, whilst listening to tv, but it's not so easy to do that with this book. I have Faber Castel Polychromous pencils, Tombow Irojiten, and also Derwent softcolour pencils but it doesn't seem to make any difference which I use, because the colour just seems to sit 'on' the page. Secondly the effect feels almost glossy, not lovely, thick and absorbent as in previous books. Sorry but this will be the last one of JB's that I buy if they are going to be like this. Very disappointed

Solidly constructed book. Has enough pictures in it to feel you got value for money. In the usual Johanna Basford style. Paper is heavy enough to take multi media, but there are pictures on both sides. So if you get bleed through, it will mess up the other side. I use color pencils, so don't know what mediums will bleed through.The paper has a yellowish, or cream, cast to it. This will give you a mid tone and will impact the colors you use. I wasn't expecting it.Good for adults and teens. I think younger kids might feel overwhelmed with the detail.

Paper is nice and thick and I've used Polychromos pencils and also Stabilo Finetips. The finetips do not show through paper as long as you don't press too hard which you don't need to as they are quite free flowing.There are lots of you tube clips to help you out if you are a beginner like me.As I'm new to adult colouring I bought this one to practice on before I start on my preferred book Enchanted Forest.Although many of the illustrations are lovely, I do find there are too many leaves, some quite large and somewhat unnatural and ugly looking so even if you were a professional at colouring would still not look great IMO.There are other illustrations to complete but majority have those ugly looking large leaves poking out which spoil the look of the finished piece.So I wouldn't recommend unless you love colouring in foliage!

Purchased this for my mother who suffered a stroke over Christmas. It was suggested that it would help her to relax and improve hand/eye coordination. The illustrations in this book are beautiful, almost too nice to spoil with coloured pencils. However, my mother loves the book and has had many days of pleasure working with pencils on the images within. It has worked as expected, she is calmer, more centred and definitely improving as her time spent concentrating on this has helped her coordination considerably. That's not to say it will have that effect for everyone, but my mother is recovering nicely and in my opinion this is helping her immensely.If you are looking for something because you've become tied up in the mindfullness craze, then you won't be disappointed with this either. There's lots to do in the book, and the images are artfully designed with a lot of different tasks and projects to work on. It will certainly help improve creativity and perhaps help your coordination as well. And hey, let's face it, there's nothing quite as calming as colouring stuff, is there?