Curious Creatures by Millie Marotta

It's a new book from Millie Marotta! It's always exciting when one of the big names in the colouring world releases a new title, and Curious Creatures is actually my joint favourite alongside her debut book. 

Curious Creatures is packed full of weird and wonderful throwbacks in the animal kingdom, including the Blue-Footed Booby, Nudibranchs, the Longhorn Cowfish, the Yeti Crab and many more! These all look as weird as their names sound and it's fabuklous to be educated in these not so popular animals whilst colouring. In fact, for the first time Millie has included a list of the creatures' names & their Latin titles in the rear of the book, so you can search them online and find out more, not to mention discover what they look like in real life to help make your pictures look realistic if you choose to go with a conservative colour palette. There's also a section of the Pavilion website in which Millie gives a fact or two about each creature.

Take a look at my video flip through of the entire book here:

Format-wise, the book is exactly the same size & shape as its predecessors, making it a fitting addition to the series on the shelf. The spine is purple this time, and has gold foiled lettering as the previous books do. This foiling is also on the cover, highlighting various spots in the illustration. The paper in Curious Creatures is the same white stock as the other books and is fairly thick, but marker pens do shadow to the image behind if you're heavy handed. The illustrations are double sided so you'll need to be careful with wet media as always. If you're wanting thicker stock and one sided images, there's always Millie's Deluxe Editions which are designed for this purpose.

The style of images is very in-keeping with Millie's work, so if you're a die hard Marotta fan you will love this! I think it's the best book since Animal Kingdom because I'm really captivated by the unique creatures included and they're all so different with no restrictive theme (ie. all Tropical or all Savannah like the last two books), so you get a real diverse mixture of animals that don't feel too similar to each other.

Here is my finished picture of a Tibetan Sand Fox. I tried to use the markers in a way that looked textured, but I'm not too happy with how it turned out. Maybe I should've used pencils to give the fur a more realistic look.

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. You can find it on Amazon here:
Millie Marotta's Curious Creatures