REVIEW / Artistic Activity Books
These activity books for children by contemporary illustrators, designers and architects will draw out the artist in everyone.
Activity books are not only a great way to entertain and occupy children, they can also allow children to explore different approaches to practical art. Here we recommend four activity books by contemporary illustrators and designers that encourage children to develop their own style of drawing, and an architectural exploration of London that turns every street into a game.
Sticker Shape Create by Thereza Rowe
In her wonderfully cheery and energetic sticker activity book, Sticker Shape Create, Brazilian illustrator Thereza Rowe inspires children to experiment with making their own distinct imagery from simple, block-coloured shapes. Illustrated in Rowe’s inimitable style, the book gives children a behind-the-scenes tutorial with one of the UK’s most exciting and innovative illustrators. Rowe transforms oddly coloured semi-circles into fluttering butterflies and unsuspecting rectangles into parading poodles, and shows young creatives how by loosely connecting a line of diamond shapes they can lend their snake a slithering effect. Sticker Shape Create is a super-stylish and incredibly fun way for children to discover there’s more than one way of representing the world around them.
Doodle a Poodle and Colour a Cat by Hannah Rollings
Following the success of her book An Artist Once Said, Hannah Rollings has returned with two new and equally artistic activity books: Doodle a Poodle and Colour a Cat. Rendered in her distinctive painterly style and featuring an acidic, Warhol-like colour palette, Rollings gives readers the tips and tricks for how to paint and draw different breeds of dogs and cats with flair.
Suggesting one sweeping brushstroke for the body of a daschund, a puddle of paint for a fluff-ball pomeranian, and watery drips with felt tip pen ticks for the mottled coat of a short haired tabby, Rollings shows children how mark making can determine the character of all manner of breeds. Doodle a Poodle and Colour a Cat will instantly absorb young artists with its rich textures, gorgeous colours and quirky pet personalities.
Alphadoodler by Jan Bajtlik
Polish graphic designer Jan Bajtlik’s Alphadoodler is a typographic adventure in drawing. Using every kind of letter form from letterpress, nineteenth century type and digital fonts all the way through to bubble writing and spaghetti letters, Bajtlik encourages young children to see letters for the graphic symbols that they are. Children will revel in the invitation to dismantle letters usually used for spelling to lend a fluoro crocodile a toothy grin, connect constellations in the sky, fight fires and groom the Hairy Faces Club’s parentheses-shaped moustaches. Printed in black-and-white with accents of fluorescent red, green and purple, Alphdoodler is a visual feast that provokes children to look for the expressive possibilities in every letter.
Big Letter Hunt London by Amandine Alessandra and Rute Nieto Ferreira
Graphic designer and photographer Amandine Alessandra and architect Rute Nieto Ferreira’s Big Letter Hunt London opens the eyes of their readers to the wealth of architectural details surrounding us in every city by playing a game of ‘spot the letters’. Using London as their case study, they highlight letters of the alphabet hidden in the facades and forms of both iconic and little-known buildings. Based on their original riso-printed edition Big Letter Hunt London is illustrated with single-colour photographs layered on top of one another, which gives the pages a highly energetic feel, and reproduces the unusual typography of each found letter form on the corresponding page. Children and adults alike find the list of facts at the back of the book fascinating as they cast familiar buildings in a new, super-colourful light.
