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Fantastic Cities: A Coloring Book of Amazing Places Real and Imagined
This unique coloring book features immersive aerial views of real cities from around the world alongside gorgeously illustrated, Inception -like architectural mandalas. Artist Steve McDonald's beautifully rendered and detailed line work offers bird's-eye perspectives of visually arresting global locales from New York, London, and Paris to Istanbul, Tokyo, and Melbourne, Rio, Amsterdam, and many more. The adult coloring book's distinctive large square format offers absorbingly complex vistas to color, the crisp white pages are conducive to a range of artistic applications, and a middle margin keeps all the artwork fully colorable. Complementing the cityscapes are a selection of mind-bending labyrinthine architectural illustrations for still deeper meditative coloring adventures and imaginative flights of fancy.
60 pages, Paperback
First published August 11, 2015
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734 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 22, 2016
Current state of my city:
I will get back to this eventually, but for now I will catalogue this book as read.
Great sketches, but not for the faint of heart. Large pages, lots of details, not for the occassional doodler.
*~*~*~*
Haven't done much over the summer, but a few days ago I started again to colour a little every day....
*~*~*~*
Finally starting on this colouring book. Haven't quite dared yet, because the pages are so full of detail. I just grabbed the very first page and will doodle along without any planning. This will probably end up as the most weirdly coloured cityscape ever.
First though: The paper is really smooth, which I do not like terribly much. There is no resistance for my pencils.
More to come...
I will get back to this eventually, but for now I will catalogue this book as read.
Great sketches, but not for the faint of heart. Large pages, lots of details, not for the occassional doodler.
*~*~*~*
Haven't done much over the summer, but a few days ago I started again to colour a little every day....
*~*~*~*
Finally starting on this colouring book. Haven't quite dared yet, because the pages are so full of detail. I just grabbed the very first page and will doodle along without any planning. This will probably end up as the most weirdly coloured cityscape ever.
First though: The paper is really smooth, which I do not like terribly much. There is no resistance for my pencils.
More to come...
August 6, 2015
If you ever wanted to paint the town red, or any colour of your choosing, "Fantastic Cities" is a winner. When I first saw an article about this urban-focused colouring book as the colouring frenzy picked up, I knew this was the one for me. I tried Secret Garden but it just didn't resonate with me. That nature-inspired colouring book was more stylized than I'd expected; it had fine details but the geometricity and the symmetry in it, plus the 2D-presentation, gave me a flat experience. "Fantastic Cities", surprisingly and counter-intuitively, has more fluidity to it. There are more squiggly lines and less rigid shapes. The various panoramic and kaleidoscopic angles, and bird's-eye view of city landscapes, gave it a much lively spatial perspective that reeled me into wanting to colour in every little shapes. Having instantly recognizable cityscapes (Toronto and Singapore being dear to my heart) only delighted me further. Go get it, even if it's just to ogle at prints of some fantastic cities.
May 28, 2017
This book is so detailed that it's a little intimidating. But I put my 'fear' aside and decided to buy it and give it a try. I'm the type of person who gets bored by coloring only one page at a time, so I will work on a page for a while and then go on to the next, or else I will pick one color (such as blue) and go from page to page finding places to put the blue to use and then start all over with the next color. Kinda weird, but it makes it more fun. As I said in the beginning, this book is massively detailed and although I've colored a LOT of coloring pages and in a LOT of adult coloring books, the tiny spaces kind of 'scare' me. But by doing a little at a time it's not so bad and it's actually a lot of fun. I love the mandalas of the different cities and I REALLY love that this book has cities that I've actually been to such as New York City and San Francisco. But it also has a ton of cities that I've been dreaming of forever. I also have his other book, "Fantastic Structures (See my review for that one as well if you wish!) and I really hope that he does more of these because they are just amazing and so much fun!
August 12, 2015
Colouring is the new/old "thing" http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-... I bought this one.
Think of one of those 1000 piece puzzles with extremely detailed cityscape. Going to take me forever but I was thinking it would keep me amused while I listened to my audio books (I'm way behind on those) during the winter.
Think of one of those 1000 piece puzzles with extremely detailed cityscape. Going to take me forever but I was thinking it would keep me amused while I listened to my audio books (I'm way behind on those) during the winter.
July 9, 2015
Fantastic! Another great coloring book after Secret Garden. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Highly recommend.
Highly recommend.
April 22, 2020
Μου βγήκαν τα μάτια με τα λεπτομερή σχέδια των πόλεων.
March 23, 2021
I have colored my way through the pandemic, spending several hours doing so each day. I'm waiting for fantastic planet to arrive, and found Fantastic Cities at ollie's bargain barn for 1.99. There was nothing to loose, so I thought I'd give it a try...I love it and am hooked on his images. Let me be clear with one caveat: these images are not for the faint of heart or new colorist. They're incredibly complex and not easy to work on...but oh, so worth it!
October 28, 2015
Fantastic cities is a great colouring book that anyone both adults and kids will enjoy. It’s bigger than I thought, A4 in height and because it is square in shape, the same length across. The book is perhaps a touch thinner than Millie Marotta’s or Johanna Basford’s books or Animorphia but only a little. All the pages are a crisp white and are nice and thick, but are printed on both sides so I don’t know how felt pens would fair (I always use pencils).
Every page of fantastic cities is a wonderful overview of a city. As if taken from the point of view of a low flying bird. There are pictures of houses, sky scrapers, factories, even a port and strangely there is one picture of a lot of cars called traffic jam!). Every city picture takes up one side of the two open pages, so no worrying about colouring in the pictures in the crease of the book, and each picture also comes with the information of which city it is written close to the spine.
As well as actual cities, this book also has mandalas of cities. I never knew anyone could make a mandala of a city, but it does work. It looks as if the city picture was put into a kaleidoscope. :) I am slightly disappointed by the mandalas though, just because there are some perfect round mandalas but others are only part of a mandala. To me this is the only downside to this book, I always prefer circular mandalas, but that really is the only downside I can see.
I really love this book as for me I love truly detailed pictures. I love looking at a picture and seeing something in one place and another thing elsewhere, but all within the same picture, a bit like where’s wally. I also like it as it’s different from millie marrotta or johanna basford or the many other adult colouring books that are on the market at the moment. While I like those books and they are very pretty and often full of greenery and flowers, there’s something about colouring a city…Different and just fun for me, perhaps because I grew up in the city?
Overall I’d really recommend this book to anyone who wants to colour in something different. All of the cities are real (apart from the mandals or course) and feature places in mexico, india, Germany to name a few and cities like kuala lupur, san Francisco, there’s even picadilly circus in London! It’s very fun and I really love this book, for the amount of colouring you get it really is worth the price and I really recommend it! It’s taking a long time to colour in just one picture :)
Every page of fantastic cities is a wonderful overview of a city. As if taken from the point of view of a low flying bird. There are pictures of houses, sky scrapers, factories, even a port and strangely there is one picture of a lot of cars called traffic jam!). Every city picture takes up one side of the two open pages, so no worrying about colouring in the pictures in the crease of the book, and each picture also comes with the information of which city it is written close to the spine.
As well as actual cities, this book also has mandalas of cities. I never knew anyone could make a mandala of a city, but it does work. It looks as if the city picture was put into a kaleidoscope. :) I am slightly disappointed by the mandalas though, just because there are some perfect round mandalas but others are only part of a mandala. To me this is the only downside to this book, I always prefer circular mandalas, but that really is the only downside I can see.
I really love this book as for me I love truly detailed pictures. I love looking at a picture and seeing something in one place and another thing elsewhere, but all within the same picture, a bit like where’s wally. I also like it as it’s different from millie marrotta or johanna basford or the many other adult colouring books that are on the market at the moment. While I like those books and they are very pretty and often full of greenery and flowers, there’s something about colouring a city…Different and just fun for me, perhaps because I grew up in the city?
Overall I’d really recommend this book to anyone who wants to colour in something different. All of the cities are real (apart from the mandals or course) and feature places in mexico, india, Germany to name a few and cities like kuala lupur, san Francisco, there’s even picadilly circus in London! It’s very fun and I really love this book, for the amount of colouring you get it really is worth the price and I really recommend it! It’s taking a long time to colour in just one picture :)
June 5, 2016
You will get a lot of hours of calming, relaxing coloring from this coloring book. The pages are filled with very finely detailed drawings, all relating in some way to cities. All most all of them cover the entire page.
The paper is of a thicker quality. It should allow for marker use. However, the pages are double sided, so I would still use markers with care.
There is also A LOT of very fine detail. And I mean very very fine. This is not a book for those who do not like to have a lot of very small spaces in the things that they color.
The biggest downside to this book, in my opinion, is that the pictures are kind of dull. I guess there is only so much you can do with with drawings of cities, but I would have liked a little more variety. Everything is very repetitive, especially in a given picture. It does let you create the variety yourself with your coloring though, which is a great way to work your creative side.
In the end, I was pretty impressed.
The paper is of a thicker quality. It should allow for marker use. However, the pages are double sided, so I would still use markers with care.
There is also A LOT of very fine detail. And I mean very very fine. This is not a book for those who do not like to have a lot of very small spaces in the things that they color.
The biggest downside to this book, in my opinion, is that the pictures are kind of dull. I guess there is only so much you can do with with drawings of cities, but I would have liked a little more variety. Everything is very repetitive, especially in a given picture. It does let you create the variety yourself with your coloring though, which is a great way to work your creative side.
In the end, I was pretty impressed.
August 22, 2015
I received this beautiful book though a Goodreads First reads giveaway. It's been a long time since I've had a coloring book and this one is fabulous. The are numerous, intricate drawings of real cities, fantasy cities and impressions of cities. I cannot wait to start coloring. The artwork is just fantastic. Thank you for this wonderful book!
January 21, 2017
Extremely intricate and detailed coloring bookThe full review is posted on Coloring Queen
February 11, 2016
10/10 would read again
March 2, 2016
Have I finished colouring this? No. Have I even started colouring it? No. Am I totally intimidated by how beautiful it is? Yes indeed.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews