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Gulliver's New Travels: Colouring in a New World
Acclaimed illustrator James Gulliver Hancock has an obsession with re-imaging his world with his drawings. His extensive travels are a key part of his creative drive. Combined with his obsession with scale and detail, it has culminated in Gulliver's New Travels, a stunning creative colouring book that is a modern take on the 18th-century Gulliver's Travels, playing with scale as in the land of Lilliput and the giants of Brobdingnag. Taking in places from around the world, from all landscapes, and even future worlds and those in galaxies far away, the illustrations are playful, fanciful but always wonderful to look at. And James's illustrations are crying out for a dash of colour. He wants you to engage with the drawings and make them your own with pens, pencils, paints and more. As you colour in, you'll discover great little details you hadn't spotted before, such as the diver swimming through the flowers and the tiny climber scaling a cactus. A major creative talent provides a wonderful book to share with those with a passion for colour. Raised in Australia, James Gulliver Hancock is now based in both Brooklyn, New York and his beach studio in Sydney. His print work has been used by Coca-Cola, Ford Motors, Herman Miller, the New York Times and Simon and Schuster. He is particularly known for his personal project All The Buildings in New York.
- GenresColouring BooksColouring
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2016
12 people want to read
About the author
James Gulliver Hancock
39 books35 followersJames Gulliver Hancock’s obsession with re-imaging his world has seen him work for major print, TV and music publishing releases including: Coca-Cola, Ford Motors, Herman Miller, Businessweek Magazine, The New York Times and Simon&Schuster. He has participated in projects in the USA the UK, Indonesia, Austria, Germany, France and Australia, taking his whimsical perception around the world.
He grew up in Sydney, Australia, and studied Visual Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney. In kindergarten he remembers devising the most complex image he could think of … refusing to move on to the next activity after painting, instead detailing a complex drawing of a city of houses including every detail, every person, and every spider web between every house. He still has the drawing.
In high school he discovered technical drawing. He has always been obsessed with machines and the way things work and rendering the meeting of tiny screws in perfect perspective was a delight. This is now married with a love of colour, paint, and controlled mess as well as connecting it to deeper conceptual and philosophical meaning.
He has traveled extensively including an overland journey from Sydney to London via S.E. Asia, China, Japan, Russia and Europe. Rolling in a typhoon in the sea between Japan and Russia he wondered how he’d save his sketchbook when the ship sank. He undertook artist residencies all over Europe and most recently has been living in New York where he has worked for a wide variety of high profile clients and taken the city by storm with his personal project www.allthebuildingsinnewyork.com
Currently he works out of two studios: one in The Pencil Factory in Brooklyn, New York, and from his homeland studio by the beach in Sydney, Australia.
Source: Biography.
He grew up in Sydney, Australia, and studied Visual Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney. In kindergarten he remembers devising the most complex image he could think of … refusing to move on to the next activity after painting, instead detailing a complex drawing of a city of houses including every detail, every person, and every spider web between every house. He still has the drawing.
In high school he discovered technical drawing. He has always been obsessed with machines and the way things work and rendering the meeting of tiny screws in perfect perspective was a delight. This is now married with a love of colour, paint, and controlled mess as well as connecting it to deeper conceptual and philosophical meaning.
He has traveled extensively including an overland journey from Sydney to London via S.E. Asia, China, Japan, Russia and Europe. Rolling in a typhoon in the sea between Japan and Russia he wondered how he’d save his sketchbook when the ship sank. He undertook artist residencies all over Europe and most recently has been living in New York where he has worked for a wide variety of high profile clients and taken the city by storm with his personal project www.allthebuildingsinnewyork.com
Currently he works out of two studios: one in The Pencil Factory in Brooklyn, New York, and from his homeland studio by the beach in Sydney, Australia.
Source: Biography.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 18, 2016
This review is taken from my blog where I review adult colouring books from a mental health perspective. Images from inside this book can be found here - https://colouringinthemidstofmadness....
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book is illustrated by James Gulliver Hancock and is a mixture of his own travels around the world and those of the original Gulliver of Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century stories. Scale in these illustrations varies throughout, just like in the original stories from Lilliput where the people are very small and Gulliver is comparatively a giant, to the land of Brobdingnag where giants of a much larger scale live and Gulliver is the size of a doll’s house doll. I expected this book to tell a somewhat coherent story and sadly it doesn’t, which I think is a little bit of a shame however, this doesn’t take anything away from the quirky and whimsical artwork. This book is square, the same size as other bestsellers, paperback, with brown card covers with an entirely silver foiled scene illustrated on the front. The images are printed double-sided and are a mixture of single and double-page spreads. The spine is glue and string bound making it durable but a little tricky to get to the middle of each spread so a little of each image is lost into it, though this will ease up a bit with use. The paper is bright white and medium thickness and sadly it bleeds pretty badly with water-based pens so I’d stick to pencils in this book which will work well as the paper is lightly textured. The book contains 96 pages of illustrations which are all drawn in a very cohesive, distinctive style which is quirky, cartoony and quite heavily patterned with few large open spaces within the designs. The pictures are very whimsical, fantastical and nonsensical and show images of giants, teeny tiny people, lands made of fruit, household objects, cities built in pot plants, soup bowls and suitcases and they include all manner of strange, weird and wacky objects and scenarios – the more you look, the more you see!
In terms of mental health, this book offers great escapism and doesn’t take itself too seriously with its whimsical imagery. There is a fair amount of detail and intricacy which is ideal for getting you to focus, concentrate, and get out of your head so that you can slow down the anxious and worrying thoughts and zone into colouring the small sections, patterns and items within each image. The line thickness is consistent throughout and is thin so you will need moderately good vision and fine motor control to enjoy this book. The images vary in size from entirely illustrated double-page spreads to smaller items in the centre of a page and everything in between. There are also a number of pages with expansive blank spaces which are either left blank for you to add your own extra drawings or backgrounds, or leave as they are. On 8 of these pages there are subtle written hints with questions and suggestions of things you could add such as ‘Where does this road go to?’ and ‘Add your own suitcase treasure’. These are all written along the edges of the pre-existing drawing so they are pretty easily ignored if drawing isn’t your forte and you prefer just to colour! The images are fun, quirky and light-hearted and this is great for keeping your mood lifted and is ideal for those who like to use bright and vibrant colour schemes because these illustrations don’t require realistic colours and you can really go all out like I did in my image. You will need a fair amount of concentration in order to complete these pages but because of the difference in size, there are larger and smaller projects for your good and bad days so there’s really something for everyone and it’s ideal for those of you with fluctuating conditions.
I would recommend this book for those of you who like quirky, whimsical images that are based on real items but aren’t realistic. While this book doesn’t tell a story, it’s a fun concept to follow Gulliver on his travels through different landscape scales and surrealism.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This book is illustrated by James Gulliver Hancock and is a mixture of his own travels around the world and those of the original Gulliver of Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century stories. Scale in these illustrations varies throughout, just like in the original stories from Lilliput where the people are very small and Gulliver is comparatively a giant, to the land of Brobdingnag where giants of a much larger scale live and Gulliver is the size of a doll’s house doll. I expected this book to tell a somewhat coherent story and sadly it doesn’t, which I think is a little bit of a shame however, this doesn’t take anything away from the quirky and whimsical artwork. This book is square, the same size as other bestsellers, paperback, with brown card covers with an entirely silver foiled scene illustrated on the front. The images are printed double-sided and are a mixture of single and double-page spreads. The spine is glue and string bound making it durable but a little tricky to get to the middle of each spread so a little of each image is lost into it, though this will ease up a bit with use. The paper is bright white and medium thickness and sadly it bleeds pretty badly with water-based pens so I’d stick to pencils in this book which will work well as the paper is lightly textured. The book contains 96 pages of illustrations which are all drawn in a very cohesive, distinctive style which is quirky, cartoony and quite heavily patterned with few large open spaces within the designs. The pictures are very whimsical, fantastical and nonsensical and show images of giants, teeny tiny people, lands made of fruit, household objects, cities built in pot plants, soup bowls and suitcases and they include all manner of strange, weird and wacky objects and scenarios – the more you look, the more you see!
In terms of mental health, this book offers great escapism and doesn’t take itself too seriously with its whimsical imagery. There is a fair amount of detail and intricacy which is ideal for getting you to focus, concentrate, and get out of your head so that you can slow down the anxious and worrying thoughts and zone into colouring the small sections, patterns and items within each image. The line thickness is consistent throughout and is thin so you will need moderately good vision and fine motor control to enjoy this book. The images vary in size from entirely illustrated double-page spreads to smaller items in the centre of a page and everything in between. There are also a number of pages with expansive blank spaces which are either left blank for you to add your own extra drawings or backgrounds, or leave as they are. On 8 of these pages there are subtle written hints with questions and suggestions of things you could add such as ‘Where does this road go to?’ and ‘Add your own suitcase treasure’. These are all written along the edges of the pre-existing drawing so they are pretty easily ignored if drawing isn’t your forte and you prefer just to colour! The images are fun, quirky and light-hearted and this is great for keeping your mood lifted and is ideal for those who like to use bright and vibrant colour schemes because these illustrations don’t require realistic colours and you can really go all out like I did in my image. You will need a fair amount of concentration in order to complete these pages but because of the difference in size, there are larger and smaller projects for your good and bad days so there’s really something for everyone and it’s ideal for those of you with fluctuating conditions.
I would recommend this book for those of you who like quirky, whimsical images that are based on real items but aren’t realistic. While this book doesn’t tell a story, it’s a fun concept to follow Gulliver on his travels through different landscape scales and surrealism.
February 26, 2017
Gorgeous coloring book filled with intricate images with a travel theme The full review is posted on Coloring Queen
September 6, 2016
The review is from my blog, more and flip through video there - https://thecoloringaddict.com/2016/08...
This is a fun book, sort of kind of reminds me of Lizzie Mary Cullens books a tad bit, for the fun factor, plus this too has a distinct style you would recognize anywhere later.
The paper is thick and nice, images on both sides. I suppose it could take a bit of water carefully but not liberal use. However it’s great for pencils, just the right kind of paper, smooth and beautiful. Pavilion Books also publishes Millie Marotta’s books, the paper seems to be the same to me.
I really like the cover as well, the brown with silver, it looks gorgeous.
Overall this is a wonderful book, if you like the style, do get it, you’ll love it. Hopefully I’ll manage to pick a picture at some point
This is a fun book, sort of kind of reminds me of Lizzie Mary Cullens books a tad bit, for the fun factor, plus this too has a distinct style you would recognize anywhere later.
The paper is thick and nice, images on both sides. I suppose it could take a bit of water carefully but not liberal use. However it’s great for pencils, just the right kind of paper, smooth and beautiful. Pavilion Books also publishes Millie Marotta’s books, the paper seems to be the same to me.
I really like the cover as well, the brown with silver, it looks gorgeous.
Overall this is a wonderful book, if you like the style, do get it, you’ll love it. Hopefully I’ll manage to pick a picture at some point
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews