If you’ve been waiting for more kawaii character coloring books, I have great news: the Rilakkuma & Sumikko Gurashi coloring books now exist!
The newest releases from the Japanese artist Inko Kotoriyama, they give you coloring lessons as well as a bunch of cute images to color. I preordered these books as soon as the listings appeared Amazon Japan, and I knew that I had to review them for SCK!
Starting off, both books have a convenient supply walkthrough that shows you art supply options like colored pencils, watercolor pencils, pastels, and the like. These pages include the results of each art supply so that you know what to expect visually, and a universal palette to help guide you with the proper colors to use for each character.
They then provide cute character profile pages with cute information like short bios, hobbies, favorites, skills, and personality types. On these pages you can practice coloring each character using the previously mentioned palette to choose your colors.
Several coloring lessons follow, each one taking advantage of different supplies and color techniques to illustrate how to color a few of the pages as the artist did. These pages are fairly easy to figure out without reading the instructions. (Pro tip: if you have a smart phone, you can download the Google Translate app to take photos of the text, and it will translate it for you!)
Then you have the most exciting part: all the cute images! There are plenty to color in each book. There are plenty of detailed images to keep you busy, but there are also pages that are less detail-heavy if you prefer something simple.
The line art varies from image to image, and can be thin or thick. The Sumikko Gurashi book is just as cute!
Both books also include a few post cards to color and cut out at the back, which would be cute to give away or even use in a planner (which is what I plan to do!)
The paper is thick and high quality, so you can use a wide variety of art supplies, including water color. Even markers should work; always test them on an unimportant page to be safe, though.
Some of the images do stretch into the spine; however, the book does flatten relatively easily, so this is a very minor infraction. It also has glue binding, which means you have the option of cutting them with an Xacto knife to remove them from the book if you choose.
You can purchase both the Rilakkuma and Sumikko Gurashi versions from Amazon Japan; if you enjoy coloring, these books are a must-have! My only hope is that they continue this series with more San-X characters.
What character coloring books would you like to see next?
(This is not a sponsored review.)
Andi lives in the countryside of Georgia in a house packed with kawaii decor and vintage toys. When she’s not barricaded in her pink craft room creating something, she can be found reading, playing Animal Crossing games, or baking something to satisfy her massive sweet tooth. Andi is currently taking a mental health break, but hopes to be back in 2023.
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