I am proud and so pleased to introduce Artfully Amazing Animals which is my first in a series of maze books for kids… and adults too!

This hand drawn book is filled with animal mazes for kids and their parents or any adult who is a kid at heart. There are spiders and bees, sharks and gold fish, beetles and bunnies, dinosaurs and even a unicorn; sometimes the animal is the actual maze while other pages feature random shaped mazes with the animals as accents. My previous coloring books gave me the idea to combine coloring page elements with maze puzzle games, all on one page, for a unique designer activity book for kids.

If you are not familiar with my coloring book style, I draw everything by hand, on paper, the old fashioned way. There is much erasing and fiddling and going back over lines before I ink everything using the best instrument ever, the Sharpie Pen with an ultra fine tip and absolutely no bleed through the paper. I love my Sharpie Pens. Everything is then scanned into the computer and cleaned up a little in a graphics editor. I don’t clean it up TOO much because I like that hand drawn feel which makes the books a little more personal.

The fiddly factor is huge when creating my coloring books but doing the mazes is doubly intense. First I draw the basic elements and then the main section lines for the maze bit. Then, I map out the winning solution path and close off paths around it before adding dead end or looping paths throughout the rest of the maze. If you think solving a maze puzzle is mind bending, try creating a maze from scratch. I love doing it but sometimes my brain short circuits – I’m pretty sure the cat can see the sparks – and I have to take a break.

I created a companion page as a free printable maze game to celebrate the publication of Artfully Amazing Animals as my gift to you. There is a cat, a snail, a butterfly and a little flying bee scattered around the free form maze. Share with your kids, your friends and print one out for yourself too. Don’t forget to solve the maze and then color the page!

Artfully Amazing Animals is available on Amazon and if you and your children enjoy it, please leave a kind review. The easiest way to support independent artists is to leave a good review and tell your friends too.

I have not restricted Artfully Amazing Animals to any one age group, as many children’s books are. I feel that kids vary in their abilities and interest levels regardless of their biological age. When adults color, some like to color tiny lines while others prefer bigger spaces for blending effects and such. Kids aren’t much different. Two 5 year old children, side by side, could have one still in the scribble all over the page stage while the other is more methodical in staying inside the lines and making careful color choices. I judge neither, as long as they are both having fun. So I have designated this book “Fun For All Ages” so parents can decide. So, whether you are 5 or 95, I hope everyone enjoys solving the mazes and coloring the pages of this, my first maze and coloring activity book.