Doodle Artist: Pets – A Review

Disclaimer – Please read this disclosure about my use of affiliate links which are contained within this post.
Annette Rand has kindly sent me a set of her newest three titles to run a UK Giveaway. If you are a UK resident and would like to be in with the chance of winning a copy of Peaceful Patterns, Pets, and Rabbits and Hares, then head over to my Facebook page and enter via the pinned post by 8pm on Sunday the 3rd of April.

Doodle Artist – Pets: A colouring book for grown ups is a lovely book illustrated and kindly sent to me by Annette Rand. This book is filled with 2 copies of 20 full-page images of pets and they’re lovely! Before you dismiss this book as only containing pictures of cats and dogs, rest assured that although they are both pictured, there are also a huge number of other pets all illustrated in Annette’s beautiful signature style – a full list can be found further into the review and photos of all of the illustrations can be found at the bottom. This paperback book is A4 size, with a portrait cover and a mixture of portrait and landscape images. The book is glue-bound so it’s a little difficult to get it to lie flat but the images are printed single-sided with a large border around them so none of the image is lost into the spine. What I really noticed about this book, apart from the stunning images, is the paper quality. Many self-published books are printed on thin paper that you can see half the proceeding images through. Not-so in Annette’s book, the paper is bright white and thick enough that my water-based fineliners didn’t bleed at all (they did shadow) or chew up the paper in any way so it was a joy to colour and would be perfect for pens or pencils and you could even use your sharpies or alcohol pens with a protective sheet behind so that the next image doesn’t get spoiled. Each of the 20 images portrays a different pet with 2 copies of each so you could colour copies to match your current, or past, pets. The animals included are: a ferret, Mongolian gerbils, Syrian hamster, Chinese fighting fish, African pygmy hedgehog, Fancy mouse, Guinea pigs, Bearded Dragon, Chinchilla, Rhode Island Red hen, Yorkshire Terrier, Budgerigars, Rabbit, Djungarian hamsters, Macaw, Gambian pouched rat, Domestic short-haired cat, Degus, Norway/fancy rat, and a Giant African Land Snail. The illustrations are mostly very recognisable and if you’re not quite sure what each of them is, there’s a helpful key at the front of the book with a named list of the images so you can check.

In terms of mental health, this book is lovely. It’s really calming and has various different levels of intricacy to suit your good and bad days. The line thickness is the same throughout and I would describe it as thin but not very thin (approximately fineliner thickness). The lines are crisp and accurate with no fuzziness, blurring or not quite joining up so this is a really professional looking book. I really enjoyed colouring this book ready for review and it was a great design to use my glitter gel pens on. The pets are beautifully drawn – some are swirly, some are patterned, some are furry and others are scaly. This really is a fabulous book for animal lovers and those who have lots of pets, it would also be an amazing book for vets! The majority of the images aren’t drawn to be exactly like real-life pets, they have realistic outlines but they’re covered in patterns which means that you can use any colour scheme you like, as you’ll see from my glittery rainbow Giant African land snail below!

I found this book really calming and relaxing. As with all nature themed books, I find them the most relaxing and the best at reducing my anxiety levels and this book was no exception. The pictures are beautiful, there are no filler images and each has definitely earnt its right to be there and you could even cut them out once you’re done and frame them. The variation in levels of detail and intricacy means that as long as you have fairly good vision, you’ll be able to enjoy this book on your good and bad days and those of you with moderate to good fine motor control will definitely get a huge amount out of this book. The image below was coloured using UK supermarket own-brand glitter gel pens.

If you’d like to get a copy of this book then it’s available here:
Amazon UK – Doodle Artist – Pets: A colouring book for grown ups

If you’d like to read my reviews of Annette’s other titles then click below:
Doodle Artist Butterflies
Doodle Artist Fanciful Rats
Doodle Artist Peaceful Patterns
Doodle Artist Rabbits and Hares
Doodle Artist Simply Snowflakes