Draw Your Way To A Younger Brain: Cats – A Review

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Draw Your Way to a Younger Brain: Cats: An Art Therapy Book (Drawing) is illustrated by Anastasia Catris, and published and kindly sent to me to review by Orion Books. This book is part of a new series called Draw Your Way To a Younger Brain and you can read my review of the other two titles here: Safari and Dogs. Anastasia has been very busy in the colouring book world and has also created 6 beautiful colouring books which are the same size and shape with her signature drawings and my reviews of these can be found here. This book is small at 17cms square which makes it perfect for drawing on the go and taking travelling in your bag. It’s paperback with a beautiful yellow cover which matches the others in the sets beautifully meaning they look really gorgeous together on a shelf. The images are printed double-sided onto bright white medium thickness paper which doesn’t bleed or shadow with water-based pens and has a little tooth perfect for blending and shading with pencils. The spine is glue-bound and the images are borderless so a little of each is lost into the spine though this will ease up a bit over time. The illustrations are, unusually, all double-page spreads and as this book is primarily a drawing book and secondarily a colouring book, there are lots of spaces for you to add your own drawings and patterns to. If you don’t like drawing then this is not the book for you. The illustrations take various different forms from a patterned animal on the left with a blank outline of it mirrored on the right to fill with patterns, to drawings that you can draw the other half of with a line of symmetry drawn down the middle, to scenes you can complete. There are written hints on every page to give you a suggested direction but you can complete the pages however you wish and there’s plenty of scope in many of them to go in whatever direction you choose. Some of the pages include: drawing more cat toys; drawing what a cat has found up a tree; adding patterns to plain big cat shapes; and adding objects and cats and other animals to scenes. The images are very cohesive and similar in style to Anastasia’s colouring books and they’re beautifully drawn.

In terms of mental health, this book is great, as long as you like drawing! I personally really struggle with drawing and therefore don’t find it to be a remotely relaxing activity, however, this book isn’t too taxing and it gives a lot of hints to get you started with drawing. These aren’t techniques or things that will teach you how to draw but they are suggestions of what to draw and sometimes that’s all the inspiration you need. There are lots of patterns added to the completed drawings which you can use as inspiration for adding patterns to the unfinished sections. You could also use search engines to look up pictures of things you want to draw in the larger spaces so that you can try to learn to draw new creatures and objects. This book probably wouldn’t suit an advanced artist because the amount of finished work in it will probably be quite restrictive but it would definitely suit a beginner or intermediate artist, especially those who prefer to have suggestions made of what to create. Adding patterns and zentangling has been found to be relaxing and very good for practising mindfulness and the more patterns I’ve discovered and added to my repertoire, the easier it has become to add patterns to things without going blank or getting stressed about it. These books are ideal for learning new patterns but if you need more inspiration and doodling and drawing are your thing then I’d highly recommend the Art Therapy series of books which I’ve reviewed here. The images are varied in content and require various different types of drawing and doodling to be added, the line thickness is consistent throughout and is very thin so this is definitely a book for those of you with good vision and fine motor control. There is a lot of intricacy and detail added to the completed images and you can add however much intricacy and detail as you want in your own drawings. The whole book is fully colourable but this isn’t a colouring book specifically and won’t suit those of you who can’t draw because there are just too many open spaces that will look very odd without anything added to them and will leave your images looking unfinished.

I would highly recommend this book, and the others in the series, for anyone who likes to draw and needs a little inspiration in order to get going. The images are lovely and the nature theme is very calming and the portable size means they’re great for colouring and drawing on the go.

If you’d like to purchase a copy it’s available here:
Amazon UK – Draw Your Way to a Younger Brain: Cats: An Art Therapy Book (Drawing)
Book Depository Worldwide – https://www.bookdepository.com/Draw-Your-Way-Younger-Brain-Cats-Anastasia-Catris/9781409165460/?a_aid=colouringitmom

The image below was drawn and added to with a Staedtler Pigment Liner and coloured using Staedtler Triplus Fibre-Tips.

GIVEAWAY and Review – Colour Me Mindful: Birds, Butterflies, Enchanted Creatures, Seasons, Tropical, Underwater

Disclaimer – Please read this disclosure about my use of affiliate links which are contained within this post.
If you would like to win a set of the newly published Colour Me Mindful books scroll to the bottom and enter via the Rafflecopter.

The Colour Me Mindful books – illustrated by Anastasia Catris and kindly sent to me for review by Orion Books,  are beautiful, small, square books that measure 17x17cms. They are much smaller than the current bestselling square books which makes them perfect for colouring on the move because they’ll slip easily inside a handbag or suitcase for that convenient colouring fix. The books are paperback and glue-bound, the images are printed double-sided and cover the whole page meaning a little is lost into the spine. Some of the images are double-page spreads and others are single images. The paper is bright white and only lightly textured and while it looks fairly thin, I experienced no bleeding when using my Stabilo .88 fineliners which can often cause problems in double-sided colouring books. I saw very faint shadowing when using the darkest colours but as soon as you colour the image on the reverse this is unlikely to be noticeable. Each book contains a hefty 50 images that are all intricately and beautifully drawn within the confines of the titled theme and there aren’t any random “filler” images – each one has definitely earnt its right to be there. Every time I’ve looked through each of these books I’ve noticed a new image that I hadn’t spotted before. Despite being small, these images take hours to colour and will keep you occupied for a really long time while you carefully colour each detailed section. The line thickness is very thin, thinner than the average fineliner, so you will definitely need good vision and fine motor control to be able to get the most out of these books. I went over the lines a few times because they are super thin but as long as you’re careful and have very good lighting, you’ll get a huge amount of enjoyment out of these books because the images are just lovely! There are currently six titles out – Birds; Butterflies; Enchanted Creatures; Seasons; Underwater and Tropical, which I have reviewed in more detail and photographed below.

Colour Me Mindful: Birds – Review
Colour Me Mindful: Birds (Colour Me Mindful Colouring Bk) – Buy it here

Colour Me Mindful: Butterflies – Review
Colour Me Mindful: Butterflies (Colour Me Mindful Colouring Bk)– Buy it here

Colour Me Mindful: Enchanted Creatures – Review
Colour Me Mindful: Enchanted Creatures (Colour Me Mindful Colouring Bk) – Buy it here

Colour Me Mindful: Seasons – Review
Colour Me Mindful: Seasons (Colour Me Mindful Colouring Bk) – Buy it here

Colour Me Mindful: Tropical – Review
Colour Me Mindful: Tropical (Colour Me Mindful Colouring Bk) – Buy it here

Colour Me Mindful: Underwater – Review
Colour Me Mindful: Underwater (Colour Me Mindful Colouring Bk) – Buy it here

If you live in the UK or Ireland and want to win a set of 3 newly published Colour Me Mindful titles, enter below!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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