Querkles: A Fun Spin on Adult Coloring!

As a fan of adult coloring, I've been searching for more fun novelty books to color, so when I began thinking of what I wanted for Christmas, I scoured the online stores for a new coloring book. This one caught my eye, since I am a lover of old films and pop art. My mother bought it as an early Christmas gift (since I am generally a hard-to-buy-for person), and I quickly started my own Querkle Icon portrait.

Front and Back of Cover

Querkles is basically a 'paint by numbers' but more whimsical, since the sections to color in are made of circles. And instead of having to wait for paint to dry (impossible for me), you can use pencils or markers to color these in. Since I've already acquired a hoard of colored pencils, I chose to use those, though the nice thing about Querkles is each portrait gets it's own page (the page on the other side of the portrait is blank), and it is easy to tear out if you don't wish to color it in the book, making it easier for those of you who like markers to not have collateral damage AKA bleed through.

Another thing that makes this coloring book unique is you only need 5 shades/colors to do an entire page in this book (there are twenty portraits in my Icons book). For those of you color lovers out there, that may seem restrictive, but you have a lot of fun finding the right shades. It took me a couple tries- I even made another color chart with darkest to lightest in each color group before choosing my colors.

Marilyn Monroe Portrait, prior to coloring:

I chose to start with Amy Winehouse for my first Querkle Icons portrait. Since I am a perfectionist, I chose to take the mystery away by looking at the index of portraits in the back of the book, though some portraits, despite their befuddling beginning patterns, I could tell who the portraits depicted. I chose my colors around Amy's penchant for wearing red and yellow. I began with the darkest shade (1) and went to the lightest (5). Here is some of that transformation:

Tips:

-Choose your colors beforehand, even if you choose to not know which portrait you are coloring.

-I went from darkest to lightest, doing one section/color at a time- I highly recommend that approach. Otherwise you may get confused or even a bit overwhelmed.

-Like any puzzle, it's easier to start at the edges- trace the inner outline of the area you wish to color (like the 1 section, 2 section, etc.) and then fill it in. It gives you a barrier just in case you have a penchant to get outside the lines.

-Know your pencils/markers before you choose them. For example, my darkest shade I chose was a pain to work with- I'd rated the brand lowest in my Color Me Happy guide due to its belligerence. And yet, I still chose it to do the largest swathe of color in the portrait. I struggled with it needlessly, when I should've chosen another pencil from the start to work with.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who enjoys adult coloring with a healthy dose of pop culture portraits that remind one of Sixties style pop art. There is another Querkles book out there if you don't like portraits: Querkles Masterpieces, which I am coveting as I write this. I was impressed with the variety of people portrayed in this book- it is pretty diverse for even a regular book, though the cover/back and my initial portrait choice doesn't do credit to that. For a full list of people portrayed in this coloring book, highlight below (they are in no particular order, so the mystery/puzzle is preserved slightly):

Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, Muhammad Ali, James Dean, Che Guevara, Jimi Hendrix, Groucho Marx, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Nelson Mandela, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frida Kahlo, Janis Joplin, Princess Diana, Audrey Hepburn, Winston Churchill, Elizabeth Taylor

P.S. Although this seems like a sponsored post, I'm just completely obsessed over this book right now and had to share how much I adore it. If you wish to see the complete page of completed Querkles portraits as seen in the back of this coloring book, PM me on Twitter or email me.

Happy Coloring!