Coloring Book Featuring Cats:Cooking With Cats (A Curious Combo of Cats, Cupcakes & Colors) by Jess Erskine and a Give-Away!

From the moment I first read about Cooking With Cats (A Curious Combo of Cats, Cupcakes & Colors), by the talented Jess Erskine, on the fabulous  Pet Lady Blog, I was intrigued.  I LOVE to cook, I LOVE cats and I LOVE to color, so it was a no-brainer. I HAD to have this book!

Cooking With Cats – is a quirky mashup of cats, cookery and cuisine, and contender for the Most-Ridiculously-Wonderful-Coloring-Book-About-Cats-of-All-Time.

Cooking With Cats contains 25 scenes of cats cavorting in the kitchen and pretending to be a variety of gourmet foods. Coloring fans have the opportunity to color sushi cats, cupcake cats, hotdog cats, ice cream cats, and coffee cats in all their furry glory.

I KNEW I HAD TO HAVE THIS BOOK!!!

So, I reached out on Facebook practically begging for a chance to review/color this darling book and Jess's Dad, Jim, was happy to oblige!

First, when I opened the book and saw the sketch of Cody that Jess had surprised me with, I nearly DIED!!! Oh how she captured Cody's "cranky" expression!!!

 I LOVE how Jess wrote the caption of "Color me unimpressed..." that is ohhh sooo Cody!!!! I wonder if she knows just how FOOD OBSESSED Cody is? (Well, for that matter, I am too, but I digress...).......

The drawings in this book are precious and in my opinion, to not lose the quality of the actual drawing, I would strongly suggest using COLORED PENCILS for this book. (Yes, I know I am not normally a fan of coloring with colored pencils AT ALL, but with this book I wish I had them to enable me to do the sort of shading that I would like to do, while maintaining the integrity and beauty of Jess's original sketches.) The sketches of the cats in particular have lovely detail that I think colored markers (which I used on my page that I colored), ruins that. I am going to go out and get some colored pencils soon, before I color pages in the rest of the book. I want my coloring to not take away from Jess's talent. Below you will see the page that I colored with markers:

I think my coloring above, would look MUCH better had it been done with colored pencils. Also, there are scrumptious looking donuts, tacos, spaghetti, ice cream and so much more to color, and...you know ME, I AM SERIOUS ABOUT MY FOOD and I must make the food look as delectable as Jess's drawings, and I think using colored pencils will enable me to do that.The kitties that Jess has drawn  in this book are so beautifully sketched, that many of them look not only ready to be colored by YOU, but they look like you just might want to CUDDLE them as well!

Here is a sample page, (all of the sample pages may be downloaded and printed so that YOU can have fun coloring them too!)  so you can see what I mean:

MEET JESS ERSKINE

How did you come up with the idea for COOKING WITH CATS?

My dad thought of it first, so I stole it from him and ran with it… mashing cats together with every kind of food I love, like cupcakes and coffee and sushi and cinnamon buns. It’s hard to look at this coloring book without your mouth watering.

Jess and Morty. Photo Courtesy of Cooking With Cats

Do you have any cats of your own?

I do. Morty is my favorite cat of all time, and he knows it. But he’s also a butt. He’s packed full of attitude and spice, and was the model for some of the pages in COOKING WITH CATS. His favorite activities are attacking legs, chasing bugs, hide and seek, naps, and watching “The Office” with me. But he’s still a butt.

Morty as inspiration on left,
you can download the page to color
and on the right,
is Jess's drawing of Morty
that is actually the back cover of the book
Photos Courtesy of Cooking With Cats

Are any of your drawings mean to cats?

Well, a little DEmeaning maybe… but no, they are not mean or cruel. And if they were, I wouldn’t admit it anyway. For instance, there is Sushi Cat, who is wrapped up in some sushi. But did I cut him up? No. As you can see in his picture, he’s just an excellent food cosplayer.

Do you really eat food with cat hair in it?

Not knowingly. However, I recently had a tonsillectomy and I still can’t taste anything. So I wouldn’t know if I did. But I’d say I probably have recently.

Where can people find your book?

They can find it at RollingDonutPress.com or on Amazon. There’s also lots of pictures from the book to check out on our Facebook page, facebook.com/cookingwithcats

How pretty is Jess? She is GORGEOUS!!
Photo Courtesy of Cooking With Cats

ILLUSTRATOR BIO

Jess Erskine, age 24, was born and raised in the foothills of Kentucky – where tea is the sweetest, and gravy goes on everything. Jess is a self-taught illustrator and the founder of Rolling Donut Press, and is the author and illustrator of Finish the Drawing; Coupons for Couples; 50 Simple Reasons 

Jess developed her love for illustration thru an early obsession over Hal Foster’s “Prince Valiant” comic series. Most of her childhood was spent listening to vintage radio programs, annoying her brothers, and poring over Foster’s beautifully detailed illustrations.

Before pursuing illustration full time, Jess worked as a restaurant manager, goldsmith, videographer, and did contract work for several local theaters.

When she isn’t nose-deep in illustration, these days Jess can be found playing with her hellion cat Morty, collaborating with her dad Jim Erskine, striving for the highest Tetris score and searching for the world’s best donuts.

HAVE I PIQUED YOUR INTEREST? I KNOW YOU LOVE CATS OR YOU WOULDN'T BE HERE...ARE YOU HUNGRY YET???? YOU WILL BE BECAUSE THERE IS A GIVE-AWAY!!! THREE LUCKY READERS WHO ARE 18 AND OVER AND WHO RESIDE IN THE U.S. WILL EACH WIN A COPY OF THIS DARLING BOOK!! ENTERING IS SUPER EASY, JUST ENTER ON THE RAFFLECOPTER BELOW AND GOOD LUCK!!!!

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