Book Review: Skymningstimman (Nightfall)

This beautiful book is the third colouring book is by Swedish artist Maria Trolle. I bought it when last year on our Euro Trip 2017, when making a Quick stop in Heisenberg. I am ashamed to say its taken me nearly a year start colouring in this book. I am currently back in Scandinavia and on the look out for her next book, Botanicum.

This book is the same format at Twilight Garden/ Blomstermandala and Hanna Karlzon’s colouring books, since they are all published by Pagina Förlags. It has a hard cover and 96 pages, which are printed on double sided ivory pages. This book is also available in the English edition, called Nightfall, which is identical except for English titles, blurb and copyright. I have already reviewed Maria’s first two colouring books Twilight Garden (Blomstermandala) and Vivi söker en vän. Check them out if your interested in Maria’s colouring books and a bit more information about the artist herself and the format of the books, as well as my completed coloured pages.

When I bought Skmningstimman, I was quite impressed by it, as there are a few difference to her first colouring book Blomstermandala. Firstly, every flower drawn in this book has been listed in the index by name. I found this so helpful, since I like to look up flowers to get inspiration for colours, shapes and textures. Although my book is in Swedish, it is easy to do a google search of the flower names to see what they look like. Another thing that I love is that Maria has drawn woman, girls, fairies and a few magical creatures in this book. The style of the girls and some of the creatures is reminisces of her other book Vivi söker en vän, but has the same cute creatures and beautiful flowers that we know and love from Blomstermandala. There are also lovely scenes that are almost framed by their design. Something that I already loved her books is that many of the pages have blacked out backgrounds and this book appears to have more of them then the previous books. I find this take the pressure off deciding on a background and really makes the images pop. Lastly this book has a tester page at the end to taste different mediums. There was previously no tester in the last two books.

I have coloured a variety of images from this book using Prismacolor Premier pencils, Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils, soft pastels and gel pens. I have also made a flip through of this book, which includes all of my coloured pictures to date. The pictures below are in order of page, rather then when I coloured them.

Page 1 and 2 are actually the last little pictures I coloured in this book. They were just quick ones I did when I had a little bit of time. I used pastels, Prismacolor pencils and white gel pens. They are just simple but are nice to see when you open the book.

Page 3 is the name plate page. The text translates to ‘this book belongs to’. This was one of the first pages I coloured and a spent quite a bit of time looking up the flowers and trying to colour them as realistically. These flower are Digtalis purpurea (Purple Foxglove), Myosotis scorpiodes (Water Forget-Me-Not), Geranium endressii (Endres cranesbill), Rosa ‘New Dawn’. I used Prismacolor and gel pens. I’m not sure I got the background perfect, as I am still trying to do hazy backgrounds but struggling a bit.

Page 6-7 is the last page I coloured and it probably took me the longest. I just couldn’t get inspired by it, but now its done I love it. The flowers are Magnolia grandiflora (Southern magnolia). I coloured the picture with Faber-Castell Polychromos, a white Prismacolor and a white gel pen. These pencils are a little hard so I tried to go in a softly as possible to get plenty of layers in. I’m not sure if all the little animals were cats, but they looked close enough. I just love the little girls, which reminded me of little Rapunzel twins.

Page 12 was the first page I coloured and my least favourite. I just turned out dreadful, but I’m happy I persisted with this book despite the inical experience. I used Prismacolor pencils, which aren’t idea with these backgrounds if your a messy colorist. Form the most part I just found colouring the Epimedium x rubrum (red barrenwort), really hard to bring to life since they were very small.

Page 17 is another favourite of mine, which I coloured with Prismacolour pencils and white gel pen. The flowers depicted are Convallaria majalis (lily of the valley), Malus (apple tree) and Nymphaeaceae Bryophyta. I just love how the scene is framed by the design and the deer is also lovely strong creature, rather then cutie.

Page 84 is an adorable picture with two little hedgehogs, which I really enjoyed colouring. They are surrounded by Polypodium vulgare (Common polypody fern), Symphyotrichum novi-belgii (New York aster) and Anemone hupehensis (Japanese anemone).

Page 86 is another one I really enjoyed and am happy with the result. I used Polychromos pencils, a white Prismacolor and a white gel pen. I spend alot of time on the skin and hair to get it smooth and give it depth. She did turn out a little purple but it is night time. The flowers in the background are simple white Rosa helenae ‘Lykkefund’ and I coloured the bird as white raven.