Carnival Carnage and Feral Fairy Tales by J. A. Early Riser & T. J. Crayons

6/1/2016

Summary
Current Price: £10.97 & £11.93
Number of Pages: 84 & 82
Size: 28 x 21cm
Paper colour: White with black borders
Paper surface: Very Smooth
Paper thickness: Average
Linework: Medium
Perforated: No
One sided: No
Binding: Glue
Drawings go into the spine: No
Waterbased pen bleed: Yes

Anisa Clare and Travis Baribeau are back with two more books in the Absurd colouring series, this time taking us on a journey through a freaky carnival and bizarre twists on traditional fairytales! Read my review of their first book here. The Absurd books have a unique format of part colouring, part activity and part storybook, featuring unique characters from the weird world of the Absur'dians! Take a peek into both books below...

Carnival Carnage

Roll up & join the oddities at CARNIVAL CARNAGE, the place where nothing is quite as it seems... Milton the Moose will disappear your carrots by magic, you can trade your stinky footwear with the Sock-Ness Monster or hang out with the unidentified creature, Grumpy Grumplin!

With loads of stories, poems and wordsearches interspersed, you may think there's not much colouring to be done- but you'd be wrong! Not only are there colouring pages to accompany the stories, but additional one-sided colouring pages at the back for you to get your teeth into! If you like fun & quirky images with original characters and that strange carnival theme, this is the one!

Feral Fairy Tales

This book takes all the fairytales we know & love and flips them on their head! Grotty, snaggly characters replace the usual flawless prince & princesses, from Snow Fright & the Seven Trollz, The Big Sad Wolf and Grimderella to Little Dread Riding Hood and Three Butchered Mice! Poems, mazes and individual paper clothing and accessories you can cut out, there's hours of fun to be had with this activity book.

The colouring pages themselves are not intricate but have a lot of different areas on each page, if that makes sense, so they're ideal for people who don't like small spaces but still want a fairly detailed illustration. The cartoonish style of artwork will appeal to a wide range of adult and child colourists.

The Absurd books always follow the same physical format: A4 size with soft-touch covers, and extremely smooth pages. The paper itself has a coating that can resist gel pens and certain pencils, making blending somewhat difficult. Markers, waterbased or otherwise, will all bleed through this paper so unless you're colouring the extra single-sided pages I'd advise caution.

Each book is absolutely crammed with content, meaning you get a bang for your buck! If activity books aren't your thing but you love the style of illustration, JUST COLOURING books are available to buy too :)

Here are my finished pictures, coloured with Staedtler Triplus felts, Copics, Tombows and PanPastels.