Coloring Books for Those Who Love Detail

There are so many great adult coloring books to choose from! How can you decide? Well, if freehanding it is not your style and you are looking for detail and strong lines and sections to follow, these are the artists whose work you will love the most! Some you may have heard of, some you may not have.

Johanna Basford

Almost everyone who loves intricate coloring books knows Johanna's work. She created the wildly popular Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest coloring books, along with Lost Ocean and Magical Jungle. Her style is very much black and white with lots of free space to fill in, along with details for you to follow with your marker/colored pencil/crayon. Usually Johanna's pictures are landscapes, animals, or contained miniature scenes with symmetry. There is a lot of whimsy and natural movement to the drawings. I am especially fond of how many types of leaves she draws. The one downside is that the paper her books are printed on bleed pretty easily, so you will find yourself having to choose between the front and back images.

https://www.johannabasford.com/

Laurence King Publishing

Millie Marotta

Like Johanna Basford, Millie Marotta is well known, especially around places like Barnes & Noble. She has many books to her name, including Animal Kingdom, Curious Creatures, and Tropical World. Her style is very distinct because she draws many elements as though they are made of flowers, leaves, berries, petals, and branches. Her realism consists of different arrangements of abstract lines. Both sides of her work open the door for a lot of colorful creativity. The one downside might be that the petals and lines sometimes mean one picture takes a very long time with lots of coloring in very tiny dot shapes. Also the paper bleeds a bit.

http://milliemarotta.co.uk/

Lark Crafts

Daria Song

Daria Song's The Time Garden, The Time Chamber, and The Night Garden are two of my very favorite coloring books in the whole world. There are lots of stars, ribbons, flowers, cats, houses with windows, girls with long hair, clocks, paper cranes, and wrapped boxes to color. Every page has an assortment of things in different textures and perspectives to work on. It really speaks to the adventurous, fairy tale loving child inside me. She also puts together a coloring book in the form of a story book, so you can read or follow along with a little tale. Again, the downside is that the paper usually bleeds.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2116821/daria-song

Penguin Random House

Hanna Karlzon

If Johanna Basford and Daria Song had a love child, it would be Hanna Karlzon's coloring books. Jewelry Box, Daydreams, Summer Nights, Seasons, Winter Dreams, Magical Dawn... Animals, flowers, birds, whimsical destinations, and strong lines. It is totally irresistable. The one downside is her faces are sometimes have too much space to color in.

http://www.hannakarlzon.com/

Gibbs Smith

Ming-Ju Sun

Ming-Ju Sun is the creator of Flower Fashion, Flower Fashion Fantasies, Japanese Kimono Designs, Art Nouveau Fashions, and other coloring books. Sometimes fashion coloring books can get boring because you wish the fabric had more designs to color in or more folds to give depth. Ming-Ju provides many brilliant options for any detail-loving colorer! It is very satisfying seeing the dresses pop off the page as you color. The cherry on top is that her Creative Haven books have single-sided pages that tear away for easy, no bleed coloring!

https://doverpublications.ecomm-search.com/search?keywords=ming-ju+sun

Dover Publications

Christy Shaffer

Christy Shaffer is one of many talented coloring book artists at Dover Publications alongside Ming-Ju Sun and Marty Noble. Everything from mandalas to mermaids is available. I have simply picked artists whose work stood out to me. Christy's work includes Unicorns, Carousel Animals, and Fairies Around the World. Her work always has a really nice, medieval sort of quality to it. This is another artists whose work is published on paper we wish was a bit thicker, and sometimes her horses have a bit too much empty space on them.

https://doverpublications.ecomm-search.com/search?keywords=christy+shaffer

Dover Publications

Tim Jeffs

While Tim Jeffs' work is not as full of lines, as most of the other entries on this list, his work does have a specific shading style that really guides your coloring utensil. Normally I also do not like coloring pages with everything shaded in black behind the picture, but I think this works to the artist's advantage, making the shading and colors pop! Also the pages are printed one-sided, so you can really enjoy going to town on them, and there are tons of pages to choose from! His Intricate Ink volumes are amazing.

https://www.pomegranate.com/tim-jeffs.html

Pomegranate Communications

Jo Su-Jin

Fairy Shampoo is Jo Su-Jin's first book publsihed in North America, so it is the only one I will mention here, but it is so pretty! The variety is really astounding considering that each page is basically a face with stars in her eyes and a bunch of odd hair. Each page has something a little different to color in. The downside is that the whole book is lady faces with hair.

http://www.waves-of-color.com/

Waves of Color

Marty Noble

Marty Noble does a lot of work with classical fairy tale art, converting it into a more accessible black and white coloring book style. I am not fond of every attempt at doing this, but Marty's version of Richard Doyle's Fairyland is my very favorite. The pages are a bit thin for my Sharpie markers, like all Dover coloring books, but I love every page. There are fairies, elves, insects, flowers, dresses, and birds that I find really inspiring. His original works, like Goddesses, are also enjoyable.

http://doverpublications.ecomm-search.com/search?keywords=Marty%20Noble

Dover Publications

Kerby Rosanes

Starting with Animorphia, Kerby Rosanes' coloring books quickly showed their style. He has a passion for realistic animals and shading, but he also really likes cartoons, plants, critters, clouds, fire, rocks, and other fantasy elements. He weaves them all together in brilliant pages of endless items to color in. If one page isn't scratching your itch one day, then either another page or just a different corner of the same page will do it for you.

https://kerbyrosanes.com/

Plume - Penguin House USA

Also see here:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ejworley/10-best-coloring-book-artists-for-people-who-love-3jzdd?utm_term=.wtzjRGLm6#.gs7dW72z9

Eve

RULER

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