Pokémon Tome 2: What I'm Hoping to See

The first Pokémon Coloriages Mystères book is probably my favourite colouring book that I own at the moment, so the announcement of a second volume was always going to get my attention. I'm about a fifth of the way through the first book now, with a few completed pages that I still need to get around to adding to the website, and it's one of those books where I regularly struggle to decide which page I want to colour next.

Obviously the Pokémon themselves are a fairly large part of why I enjoy it, but I actually think it's the backgrounds that make the first book particularly special. There's a really nice contrast between the characters and everything happening around them, which makes the finished pages feel like complete illustrations rather than simply a Pokémon surrounded by numbered sections.

There wasn't really much doubt that I'd end up buying Tome 2. I didn't preorder immediately because I wanted to see some of the artwork first, but eventually gave in and ordered it alongside the upcoming Les plus beaux paysages Disney book, because apparently waiting for two new colouring books to arrive at the same time seemed like the sensible option.

The book isn't released until 14 October, so this isn't a review and I'm certainly not going to pretend I know what it's like to colour yet. For now, it's really about what we know, what I've seen so far and what I'm hoping to find when I finally have the book in front of me.

What I'm hoping Tome 2 gets right

Hachette has confirmed 50 new illustrations, including several double-page pictures, with Jérémy Mariez and Alexandre Karam returning as illustrators. I'm not going to repeat every specification here because that's what the Pokémon Tome 2 page on the site is for. I'm much more interested in what those 50 illustrations are actually going to be like.

The biggest thing for me is the illustration style. The characters in the original book are great, but the backgrounds are what really bring the pages together, and I'm hoping Tome 2 continues that. The previews I've seen so far have made me fairly optimistic, although we've still only seen a relatively small selection of the book.

I'm also becoming increasingly convinced it could have a very heavy focus on the original generation of Pokémon, potentially even being entirely Gen 1, although that's my own suspicion rather than something that's been confirmed.

The inclusion of the original legendary birds is particularly exciting, and I've also seen the Ponyta and Rapidash double-page illustration which, despite neither being Pokémon I'd necessarily have picked myself, looks amazing. I'm slightly torn on whether we really needed more Pikachu after the first book, but with Pokémon celebrating its 30th anniversary, it would probably have been stranger if Pikachu hadn't appeared at all.

I'd have loved some Pokémon battles or illustrations involving trainers alongside their Pokémon, although I'm becoming less convinced that's the direction Tome 2 is taking. More than anything, I'm hoping there's a Scyther hidden somewhere among the pages we haven't seen yet. It's my favourite Pokémon full stop, so if there is one, that's probably the question of which page I'm colouring first already answered.

I'm looking forward to the double pages

I'm really pleased Tome 2 includes several double-page illustrations because they completely change the pace of colouring for me. A normal page generally takes me somewhere between six and ten hours, whereas a double page can easily push beyond sixteen, so you end up spending considerably longer working through one illustration and watching everything gradually come together.

They can be a little awkward when there are lots of detailed areas running through the centre of the book, so I'll be interested to see how the new ones are laid out when I actually have the physical copy. From what I've seen of the Ponyta and Rapidash page so far, though, I'm definitely looking forward to them.

Yes, I look at the solutions

I know part of the appeal of mystery colouring for some people is avoiding the solutions and discovering the image entirely through colouring it, but I'm absolutely not one of those people. I use the finished illustrations as another colour reference alongside the colour chart for each page, and I also enjoy seeing how other people have coloured the same images because it can give me ideas for when I eventually get around to them myself.

That's something I want this article to grow into as well. I'm not interested in uploading scans of the solutions, but as I colour pages from Tome 2, my finished versions will appear on Colours by Lee along with the markers I've used. If other people eventually submit their own Tome 2 pages to the community, there'll hopefully be different interpretations to explore too.

When my pre-order copy arrives

When the book finally turns up, there's definitely going to be an unboxing video, followed by a proper look through the solutions and then the actual colouring pages to see how many colours each one requires. After that I'll choose the first page and there's a fairly good chance I'll start it the same day.

That's really when this article can start becoming something more than a pre-release look at the book. I'll be able to compare it properly with the first Pokémon volume, see whether the backgrounds I love have carried across, look at how the double pages work in the physical book and, most importantly, actually spend some time colouring it.

Until then, there are things I'm deliberately not going to judge because I don't have the book yet. The original is currently my favourite book in my collection, Tome 2 is already preordered, and there are still plenty of illustrations left to discover. Just hoping one of them is Scyther.