After so much colouring envy I finally bought Maria Trolle’s Twilight Garden. This beautiful Swedish colouring book has been my latest obsession. I was determined to get as many pages done before I go on my trip. It was an absolute joy to colour. I was a bit intimidated at first, but after taking a few advanced tutorials I can imagine a colour scheme for every page.

Maria Trolle is a Swedish graphic designer, gardener and mother. She is a self-taught artist and does a lot of work for Swedish garden magazines and grocery chains. She draws inspiration from the flora and fauna in her garden. She lives just outside of Stockholm on a beautiful farm. She has a blog and website, called Trolle’s Garden, which is a collaboration with her husband, who is a Garden designer and Design director. Here you can find information on their current projects and images of their amazing garden.

Maria’s first colouring book was Blomstermandala, which was a 20-page poster book, filled with flower still lifes. She also made a postcard book with the similar images. After the success of these two book, she published a full-scale colouring book in 96 pages, in the same theme. This full-scale version of Blomstermandala was eventually republished in an English version,  Twilight Garden, which is the version I bought. Both versions have been incredibly popular in the colouring community. She also illustrated a children’s book,”Vivi söker en vän” (Vivi’s looking for a friend). This was also made into a colouring book under the same name. I have actually purchased this one and waiting to pick it up in Sweden in a few weeks. I’m so excited to see it!

The paper in this book is a lovely thick ivory colour. I didn’t find any bleed through using pencils and my Prismacolor blended really well on this paper. The images include flower still lifes, garden scenes with and without animals and some blacked in backgrounds.

This collection of pictures I coloured is in order of when I coloured them. As I mentioned I did use some tutorials. They were all from Chris Cheng’s Youtube channel. These were by far the most advanced tutorials I’ve ever done and I really learned a lot. So I tried to incorporate these new skills into the pictures I coloured on my own.

 

Before this book arrived I could not wait to start this tutorial, Twilight Garden, by Chris Cheng. It felt like it took forever but there is so much colour laydown. Just the pond used at least 10 colours. It really taught me how to blend colours to create depth and new shades. I really love how it turned out.

 

I did this page when I was having a break from the tutorial. I’m really not happy with how it turned out. I tried using pastels for the background and then went over with pencil. I think the colour combination was wrong.

 

After completing the previous tutorial I did this gorgeous swallow on my own. I really enjoyed colouring this one and happy with the results.

 

I thought I better get to the title page. This was a fun one that didn’t take long.

 

This is a tutorial, Kitchen Art (Chris Cheng) I have been eying for a while and couldn’t wait to start. I have never coloured still life vegetables in pencil before. I absolutely love the result.

 

I decided to take what I learned and do the companion page to the vegetables. I was a bit worried about the colour combination but I’m happy with it.

 

After colouring the gorgeous ginger kitty in Daydreams, I really wanted to have another go colouring a cat. I am really happy how this one turned out. I used a white uniball pen to detail the fur and whiskers. He looks so peaceful in his colourful garden bed.

This is another beautiful fruit, flower and cat still life Chris did a tutorial series for. I really enjoyed this one even though it took forever. At least it could be done in chunks when I had limited time in the evenings to colour. The fruit just looks so delicious.

 

I was hooked on colouring fruit so I did the companion page and used the same techniques to colour the pears and cats. I’m not so happy with the background but it was still nice to fill it in. I kind of got sick of it in the end so its a bit scratchy.

 

This was the last page I did which didn’t take too long. I couldn’t wait to try one of the black backgrounds. When colouring my own black background it always looks streaky but I didn’t have to worry about this one. Not sure about colour scheme but it was fun.

 

This book and other can be purchased from

• Book Depository (free postage to Australia)
• Amazon
• Booktopia (free postage offers to Australia)
• Penstore

For reviews, flip through and tutorials check out these videos and posts:

• Interview with Maria Trolle by Amelia’s Magazine
• Interview with Maria Trolle by Color with Iris
• Book review – Blomstermandala by Maria Trolle by Colour with Iris
• Flip Through: Blomstermandala (Twilight Garden) Coloring Book (Chris Cheng)
• Chris Cheng’s tutorials for Twilight Garden
• Julie’s Passion for Coloring tutorials for Twilight Garden
• Shirley XL.Y. tutorial for Flower Bouquet
• Pinterest feed of coloured pages