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Lost Ocean Postcard Edition: 50 Postcards to Colour and Send
There are two sets of postcards, one including 36 postcards in a book and the larger set containing 50 in a presentation box which is the set I’m reviewing here (do check listings carefully to make sure you’re getting the set you want). As stated before, this set contains 50 postcards, all of which are unique with no duplicates and they are beautiful to look at. The majority of the postcards are landscape, and a few are portrait (5), they measure 16×11.2cm (a little smaller than the SG and EF postcards – see photo below). Some are of the whole original image scaled down and others are of sections of the original image that have been shrunk a little so there is a real variety of intricacy levels from very intricate to virtually impossible to colour – the majority of the postcards are nowhere near the same size as the original illustrations with some being shrunk from 22.5cm across to just 9.5cm so you can imagine just how small these are.
The postcards are made of thick, cream card which doesn’t bleed with water-based pens. The cards are a much yellower colour than the Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest Postcards and books (see comparison photo below). I’m personally not overly keen on this yellowy cream colour and feel that it makes the cards look almost dirty. Strangely, the cream appears to have been printed onto originally white card because in a few places it’s blotchy and there are even small white circular printing errors on a few (see image below), the edges of the cards are white. Because the colour has been printed on, water-based pens don’t colour smoothly or evenly and are almost repelled by the surface causing a much paler colour and a patchy appearance (see photo below – I will definitely be avoiding pens on these cards because of this). The postcards are lightly textured and take pencils well so you can build up plenty of layers though there isn’t much space within the designs to blend or shade unless you want to colour over the lines. The line thickness is spindly thin and sadly, this is where the problem is. I have very good vision for small, close things, and also have very good fine motor control but the images on these postcards are so tiny that they’re almost impossible to colour and I went over the lines a number of times. Fineliners don’t colour well on this card and even those with 0.3mm and 0.4mm nibs were sometimes too thick to colour the pictures neatly. This is such a shame because I’m a huge fan of Johanna’s images and I just love her books but scaling down the images to postcard size really wasn’t a sensible choice because it’s so limiting. The postcards are beautiful to look at and would be gorgeous to send or display as they are but given that they’re sold as colouring postcards, I expect to be able to colour them and I just haven’t found that possible to do as neatly as I’d like to. I had assumed that the images would include full-size zoomed in sections of the original images so that you can still blend and shade with pencils and use felt-tips or fineliners but because the images have been shrunk they’re just too small to colour (see the photos below where I’ve shown a 0.4mm Stabilo nib for scale).
Unfortunately, from a mental health perspective I really can’t recommend these. I have perfect vision (no glasses needed yet) and fine motor control and really struggled to colour them and found it quite stressful because I just couldn’t get it to look right. Intricate is an understatement when describing these images – they’re so detailed and tiny and while this makes them really interesting to look at, I would have to say that they’re really not well designed for colouring (I coloured one of the largest, least detailed images and still really struggled). You can’t even make copies of them and blow them up larger because the copyright instructions strictly prohibit this. All in all, I’m afraid I’m really disappointed. It’s such a shame these postcards didn’t follow the format of the Secret Garden Postcards, or those of Millie Marrotta’s Animal Kingdom and Tropical Wonderland which had very few uncolourable images due to them being zoomed in sections of the illustrations, a much more sensible and usable format. My recommendation would be to get the book of Lost Ocean which is currently half price on Amazon and half the price of this postcard set, it contains many more images, none of which are impossible to colour. These postcards would look beautiful framed as they are but for me, they’re just not suitable for colouring, I’m deeply disappointed.
If you’d still like to purchase them or view them online, they can be found here.
Amazon UK – Lost Ocean Postcard Edition: 50 Postcards to Colour and Send
Book Depository Worldwide – http://www.bookdepository.com/Lost-Ocean-Postcard-Edition-Johann-Basford/9780753557372/?a_aid=colouringitmom
The book of Lost Ocean can be found here:
Review – Lost Ocean
Amazon UK – Lost Ocean: An Inky Adventure & Colouring Book
Book Depository Worldwide – http://www.bookdepository.com/Lost-Ocean-Johann-Basford/9780753557150/?a_aid=colouringitmom
The image below was coloured using Faber-Castell Polychromos Pencils. The partially coloured image was coloured using Stabilo Point 88 Fineliners which were repelled by the surface of the card.
In The Midst Of Madness 