Fancy colouring in something a little odd or fantastical…then the Fantastic & Fabulous or Iconic Ireland colouring books might be for you!
The ‘fantastic and fabulous’ part refers to the creatures in the drawings, which generally come from a doodle that then gets filtered and honed and built up into a picture that can be coloured in. There are ten drawings in the book, which is A6-sized and they each take up to 30 mins to do. Creatures with multiple heads and faces in their feet, fingers and trees with teeth and snakes for tongues… all of them waiting to be brought to life.
There can be up to 50 creatures on any one page – but there is nothing logical about these creatures. Most have beginnings and ends, but their feet might have a couple of arguing heads, their hair made up of bird beaks and snakes. They might have a fin for a tail or a lizard’s tail or three webbed feet. Maybe this is why they appeal to all ages, from five years old to seventy-five.
I’m on the third print run now and so far the books have gone as far as Australia, but also to France, Scotland, all over Ireland and to London.
You can use any medium, and when you’re done, children you can ask adults to make up a story to fit the image or vice versa. Then you have something unique… Or, if you want to post your coloured images up here, I’ll write something inspired by them!
Fantastic & Fabulous Dublin, a colouring book featuring Dublin hallmarks surrounded by my strange creatures, came out during lockdown
.
.
Some of the fun people have had:
So far, they have been coloured in with watercolours and acrylics, pencils and gel pens and markers and no two renditions are the same as you can see:
THE FABULOUS WORLDS storybook
After the colouring book, because I had lots of pictures I’d already painted, and everyone was always asking what they were about, I made up a storybook – the Fabulous Worlds storybook – and told some of their off-the-wall tales – purple birds appearing in the sky, what happens when snails get indigestion etc.
But I also left two stories to be written opposite the last two pictures…
The trick is to find a character on the page and figure out what they might be doing there or thinking about or seeing…
Lindsay J Sedgwick 