Review: Beautiful Fantasy Girls by Maxim Simonenko
Beautiful Fantasy Girls is the second coloring book from the German portrait artist, Maxim Simonenko. If you like coloring portraits with a fantasy twist, you’ll really enjoy this book. There is not a lot of detail so it’s a good book for a beginner to practice skin tones and hair highlighting/blending. Since it’s fantasy, you don’t have to stick to traditional skin tones, you can let you imagination take over!
This book is published by Amazon and like most Amazon coloring books, the paper could be better but it is single sided which helps. It’s a good value, priced lower than a lot of other coloring books and provides 45 original designs.
Facebook Adult Coloring Group Member, Randi Jameson, mainly used Prismacolor pencils and alcohol markers, adding highlights with Sakura moonlight pens, to color the pictures above. Instead of coloring on the Amazon paper, she printed it out on standard cardstock. Randi has been coloring since childhood and developed into an artist in her teens. She has been involved in the arts throughout her career and now retired, she’s gotten into coloring books which she hopes to publish soon. She says, “I lay down all basic large areas in marker to shade with pencil. I found the heavy lines difficult to blend around. To make a more “painterly” page, I used pastel, applied with a trimmed down brush to complete the pieces.” She also added, “The hair was a large enough area to really begin to try new techniques. I appreciate images that allow exploration of color flow.” Randi has carpal tunnel so she appreciated that the images were large enough with no tiny details.
Charlotte King from the Adult Coloring Group on Facebook, used Prismacolor Premier pencils with a Thornton Blender and Derwent Burnisher on the pages above. Charlotte started coloring at the beginning of June 2022 and considers herself to be a beginner. Her dad had fallen and broke his hip, so she started coloring at his bedside in the hospital. She said, “It was a way to pass the time and, as I soon found, a way to cope with everything else.” She usually uses is 110# Springhill Digital for paper, but because it’s been difficult to find, she used 67# Neenah Bristol Vellum with these pages. She says, “I don’t care much for this paper as it can be a challenge to use. I have found that it has a smooth side and a rough side. The smooth side is much easier to color on.” As for the designs, she said, “Even though it was the most challenging part, I enjoyed the challenge of coloring the hair. I’ve found that i get best results by, after putting my color down, I use a Thornton Blender and follow that up with Derwent Burnisher. It ends up being nice and shiny.”
Adult Coloring Group Member, Kita Coleman, also took up coloring in June 2022. She said, “I do it because it takes me to a calm relaxing place where I can just relax and use my imagination and be creative..when I’m stressed this is my go to.” On the pages above, she used a combination of Prismacolor Premier, Prismacolor Scholar, and Castle Art Premium pencils along with a blender brush in some spots. She said, “The second one was challenging because I didn’t know what colors to use for the scales but I just used my imagination! The first one I enjoyed doing the hair and face to give her character. It was fun!”
Where to Buy?
You can find this book, as well as Maxim’s earlier coloring book on Amazon.com
Download a Sample Page!
Maxim has been generous enough to share this page to download to our members and visitors free of charge!
About the Artist
Maxim SimonenkoI is a versatile artist and drawing teacher whose work has been featured in video games, movies, manga short stories and on fantasy book covers. Today, Maxim is booked throughout Europe as a professional portrait artist. For over 14 years he has also worked as an art lecturer specializing in portrait and manga drawing, teaching at schools, academies and other institutions. Maxim also shares his knowledge on these topics in his self-developed online drawing courses. He is currently getting ready to release his third coloring book (a Chibi themed book.)
You can find Maxim on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maximko.art/
