Book review: Summer Nights (Sommarnatt)

Hi there, I have another colouring book review today from a gorgeous book, which I have been working in off and on for a while. I have also released my first Youtube video, which is a flip through of Summer Nights and includes all the completed pictures I have coloured so far. I intend making more videos in the future, for the rest of my colouring books. So stay tuned for more and bare with me as I am still learning how to make videos.

This book is by the Swedish colouring book illustrator and artist, Hanna Karlzon. This book is the English edition of Sommarnatt, which was her second colouring book. If you’re a long time colourist I’m sure you are very familiar with this book and Hanna’s others books, which are very much a favourite in the colouring community.

I have previously done a book review of her first colouring book Daydreams (Dagdrommar) so I will try not repeat myself too much. If you want to know a bit more about the artist, my impressions of that book and my completed coloured pictures, please check out it.

The format of this book is the same as the rest of her colouring books. It has a hardcover with gold foiling details. The paper inside is a high-quality off-white paper and has 96 double-sided pages, with 85 illustrations to colour. The art in this book was inspired by the summer Scandinavian evenings. It features starry night scenes, whimsical gardens, sea creatures, beautiful girls, bejewelled insects, ornate birds and more.

I really cherish this book, as I do all of my Hanna Karlzon books. It just has a great range of art in Hanna’s signature style, with plenty of variety so you don’t feel like your colouring the same kind of images. Since this is a summer themed book, it really inspired me to go bit crazy with brighter colours then I would normally choose. I took a few risks, trying different techniques and colours that I normally wouldn’t use and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Below is my video flip through and all my finished coloured pages in the order in which I coloured them. I used a variety of mediums that I have detailed below. All of these coloured pictures, plus any extra I do in the future can also be seen in my Summer Nights Gallery. If you are interested in where to purchase this book, see the end of this post.

This was the first picture I coloured from this book. I’m not sure about the colour scheme since its so unrealistic and so much is going on. I tried to use opposing colours, but with so many elements,s it got a little out of hand. I’m also not great at colouring skylines, so I wanted to practise something a bit different. Overall I don’t mind this picture and happiest with my little frog. I used Prismacolor Premier pencils for this page, which worked really well on this paper. I also used a white gel pen for some detailing.

This picture was done for my Derwent Products Review. I wanted to see how I would go colouring an entire picture with Derwent Artist Pencils. I did find these pencils a little hard and it was difficult to get as much pigment as I was used to. I did have to use a black Faber-Castell Pitt pen and gel pens for the sky, jewels and some detailing just to give a bit more life to this picture. The paper took the pencils quite well though and I was able to get several layers down. I also had no bleed through using the Pitt pen or the gel pens.

This picture was coloured following from La Artistino (Peta Hewitt) four-part Grasshopper colouring tutorial. This is a great tutorial to learn how to choose colours and how to use Polychromos pencils. I am quite heavy handed when I colour, so this tutorial really helped me to relax a bit and use a lighter touch to get the best result using these harder pencils. I love how this page turned and out it’s a shame I couldn’t get the photograph to come out as vibrant is it is in real life. The mediums used were Polychromos pencils, Derwent Artist pencils and a white gel pen.

After a long hiatus from this book, I returned to colour this gorgeous butterfly and poppy wreath. I used a combination of Polychromos pencils and Derwent Artist Pencils, which work really well together. I also used a white Posca pen for highlights. I love this picture and was really proud to have it chosen of the banner of my Facebook colouring groups for the day.

It took me a while to get the motivation to do the title page for this book. I was inspired by the bluebirds from this picture. My background was meant have a pink-grey smokey effect but I screwed it up. I went over with some muted blues to cover it up and it turned out ok. For this picture, I used Prismacolor Premier pencils and a white Posca pen.

This picture reminded me of the fairy door, that you can buy for a little girl. I started this picture by colouring the backgrounds first, which is not my usual way to colour. I always find when I do the background first the picture never works out exactly how I imaged. When I was colouring this picture I really worried the colour scheme was all wrong and regretted my choice. Since I’m not one to leave a working progress, I pushed on until it was finished. Overall I don’t mind it now it’s done. I used a combination of Polychromos pencils and Derwent Artist pencils. I did also use a white Prismacolor Premier pencil for the wings, since its translucent and a white gel pen for detailing.

This is the second human I have coloured in one of Hanna’s books. I use to get a bit intimidated by colouring skin and hair. Recently I have been working on another book and I have had more practice so I decided it was time to do one in this book. I wish the photograph turned out a bit better since in real life the hair is a lovely auburn colour and the rest of the colours are more vibrant. My background was also a bit streaky in the photo, which is not in real life, but it could have done with a few more layers to smooth it out. I used Prismacolor Premier pencils for the majority of this picture. For the background I used a dark blue Tombow brush pen over blue pencil and then another layer of pencil over the top. This technique worked really well for the chalky moon, so I think I will try that again elsewhere. I also used a white gel pen for detailing, which needed a few layers since blue keeps bleeding through.

My last picture is this lovely cat with birdy royalty. This is probably one of my favourite pictures. I really enjoyed colouring the fur and using gel pens with pencils. I’m not sure I completely pulled off the background since I’m still practising those kinds of hazy scenes. I used Prismacolor Premier Pens and white, pink, gold and dark purple gel pens.