Inky Ocean by Helen Elliston

1/12/2015

Summary
Current Price: £6.99
Number of Pages: 106
Size: 28 x 21cm
Paper colour: White
Paper surface: Smooth
Paper thickness: Average
Linework: Fine
Perforated: No
One sided: Yes
Binding: Glue
Drawings go into the spine: Yes
Waterbased pen bleed: None

Inky Ocean (not to be confused with Johanna Basford's Lost Ocean) is a colouring book by Devonshire novelist and illustrator Helen Elliston, released in early Autumn 2015. Whilst maintaining an adult level of complexity the book also includes quests and instructions for the colourist, which gives it the fun factor and harks back to those nostalgic colouring activity books we loved as children. Inside you will find lost treasure, crumbling shipwrecks and forgotten underwater lands alongside giant jellyfish, lurking sharks and majestic whales. The activities include adding fishy details to a nautical emblem, sketching your own marine maze and 'collecting' keys throughout the book - all of which have a letter that makes up a watery anagram at the end.

Although the paper feels quite thin Staedtler Triplus pens don't bleed through at all, but with the illustrations being on-sided it doesn't really matter anyway. The book has a glossy card cover which is partially coloured, and is quite substantial at 106 pages.

The only thing I have to mention is that some of the designs are a little fuzzy, the lines not crisp and clean but slightly blurred as if photocopied. It's probably a re-sizing problem when the images were scanned in from hand-drawn illustrations to digital files. The drawings themselves are very fine and delicate, with lots of tiny areas for you to get your fineliners into. The sketchy quality has that handmade feel that computerised images just can't acheive.

Overall I'd recommend this book as one to share with the children in your life, as it's very entertaining and would appeal to youngsters as well as adults. Look out for the next books in the series, Inky Garden & Inky Mandalas!

Here's my finished page!