(++++) FILL IN THE NOT-BLANKS

Alien Worlds: Color Cosmic Kingdoms. By Kerby Rosanes. Plume. $17.

Immortal Ink: A Tattoo Coloring Book. By Tania Maia, El Rose and François Gautier. Plume. $16.

     The amazingly intricate art of Kerby Rosanes really does not require color: his black-and-white renditions of worlds real, surreal and almost real stand on their own as fascinating studies of things that are or are not, could be or could not be. Yet Rosanes’ art is also wonderful to color, which is why his many coloring books for adults are inevitably so impressive. Rosanes lays out worlds that are tremendously detailed and worth poring over to study with close attention, yet can be made even more expressive – and more personalized – by anyone interested in taking the time and effort to add color to them. In the case of Alien Worlds, Rosanes really does offer up worlds, albeit nothing like the genuine extraterrestrial ones discovered on a near-constant basis by scientists. Rosanes’ imagination focuses on worlds that just barely possibly might be and on the sorts of creatures that just barely possibly might inhabit them, or might have inhabited them in the past. This is all fantasy, not science fiction, despite the space-travel trappings of the book and the way Rosanes ties it together by having a solitary space-suited astronaut as the human explorer of each of the worlds. There are 10 places portrayed in Alien Worlds, and each is explained in a single sentence at the start of the book. For instance, “The Futuristic Planet” is “an artificial marvel with advanced cities and high-tech aliens,” while “The Steampunk Sphere” is “a mechanical world filled with sentient, steam-powered automata.” At the very end of the book, in a section called “The Astronaut’s Log,” Rosanes lists and discusses all the creatures found by the solitary astronaut on all the worlds visited in the book – lending further depth to a presentation that goes far beyond the notion of a mere coloring book. There is one significant flaw in the presentation, though, and it is one that appears in other Rosanes books as well: both the table of contents and the final “log” refer to specific pages, but the book’s pages are not numbered – which makes no sense at all and makes cross-referencing specific worlds and creatures far harder than necessary. Aside from that design error, there is nothing with which to find fault here as Rosanes lets his imagination roam as far as it wishes. One page features a five-eyed, vaguely leonine creature with a flower-shaped crest; one shows two-headed, dragon-like creatures with powerful but butterfly-like wings; one two-page spread shows the astronaut sitting on the edge of a platter-like surface, observing surroundings consisting of spike-topped buildings and creatures that seem on the border between the animate and the mechanical; one portrays a toothy being with four large legs plus two small grasping limbs, the upper part of its head appearing to be a skull and its back looking as if it is perpetually on fire; one shows a fascinating feathered-serpent-like creature embedded in a gigantic crystal. And there is a great deal more than this. The detailing on every page is simply remarkable, or rather complexly remarkable, since there is nothing simple about Rosanes’ art or imagination. This is a book that artists of all sorts can study with care for a considerable time, reveling in the astonishing complexity of each wholly impossible world and the way in which Rosanes makes each of them seem almost plausible. And it is a book that colorists can delight in for who-knows-how-long, since the extreme elaborateness of every page presents nearly infinite possibilities for turning these remarkable black-and-white imaginary realms into remarkable multicolored ones.

     It would take an incredibly skilled tattoo artist to transform even a small element of Rosanes’ work into body art – but the intricacies of tattoos are really of a different order. Tattoos are by no means to everyone’s taste – for every person who regards them as a form of bodily expression, there is one who sees them as disfigurement. Still, there is no doubt about tattoos as forms of artistry, and it is not necessary to want them on one’s own body in order to find them fascinating to examine, understand and, yes, color. Immortal Ink is interesting not only for showing black-and-white tattoos that colorists can explore and personalize as they wish, but also for explaining a bit about various types of tattoos and their different uses and expressive intents. The categories shown and discussed are Americana, Illustrative, Blackwork, Neo-Traditional, Steampunk, Surrealism, Japanese, and Sketch – and the book’s pages are numbered, so finding any category is simple. The sections’ titles do not really explain the nuances of the various tattoo styles, but the introduction to each section does that well. Blackwork, for instance, refers to “anything drawn using only black ink” and is “characterized by strong, simple, clean lines and powerful use of negative space.” Japanese tattoos have “vibrant colors and creative shading” and feature imagery that “is often a way to honor folklore or tradition.” Sketch tattoos look “as if the artist has sketched them onto the skin” and “can evoke a feeling of movement and complexity.” The explanations are not confined to the start of each section: every individual tattoo shown gets its own short but informative discussion. Thus, the lantern (in “Americana”) “symbolizes a quest for knowledge and finding a true path in life.” The wolf (in “Neo-Traditional”) represents “power, loyalty, and valor.” The elephant (in “Steampunk”) “symbolizes wisdom, strength, loyalty, and the ability to carry great weight with dignity and strength.” The descriptions of individual tattoos will be of greatest interest to people who are actually contemplating getting them or who know someone who has one and are wondering about its underlying meaning – although it is worth pointing out that the explanations in Immortal Ink are not necessarily the only ones relevant to the specific tattoos shown in the book. Like the pages of Rosanes’ Alien Worlds, those of Immortal Ink invite close attention (although not quite at the Rosanes level), contemplation, and a wide variety of responses, since these 45 tattoos range in appearance from items of complex beauty to ones with a genuinely sinister air. Colorists, whether or not they themselves have or would consider any of the tattoos here, can use Immortal Ink to let their own creativity flow in terms of accentuating or downplaying specific elements of each tattoo – and, if they are so inclined, to create a color palette that they themselves might at some point consider wearing, or at least admiring on the skin of someone else.