Neil Gaiman M Is For Magic

How to Actually Get the Most Out of M is for Magic

Most people buy the book and immediately start coloring page one the way they'd color anything else. That works fine until you hit the later pages, where the line art gets dense enough that standard colored pencils or cheap markers turn everything into a muddy mess. I went through about six different coloring sessions before I figured out a workflow that actually holds up across the whole book. The core issue with the book isn't even the complexity of the drawings. It's that different artists contributed different styles, and some pages are heavily inked while others have softer lines. Treating every page the same way is why half the books end up looking worse than the print quality alone would produce.

Getting Started with Neil Gaiman M Is For Magic

The book itself is straightforward to acquire. It's available from most major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Book Depository. The standard edition has thirty-two pages with full-color cover art and black line drawings inside. Some editions are single-purpose coloring books while others bundle the finished art alongside coloring pages. Check what you're buying because those two formats are not interchangeable if you actually plan to color in them. I bought the first copy thinking I had the right version and nearly returned it because the pages were thinner than expected. The bleed-through with markers is real on this particular paper stock. You need something behind the page you're working on, and regular printer paper won't stop it. I started using cheap reusable coloring pads or just a thick piece of cardstock, and that alone made the difference between a usable page and a ruined one.

Tools That Actually Work for This Book

Here's what I settled on after burning through an entire set of Prismacolor Premiers. The paper in M is for Magic handles light pressure well but falls apart under heavy layering or wet media. That means your tool choices matter more than usual. Colored pencils — Prismacolor still work but you need to be disciplined about pressure. Light layers, build slowly. The dense artwork in pages like "S is for Storm" and "V is for Vampires" rewards patience. Dark pencils will tear the paper if you press hard enough, and once you tear a hole in that line art there is no coming back. Markers — Copics are the gold standard here but they're expensive and the ink soaks through faster than you'd expect. I switched to alcohol-based markers from the Sketched line by Copic because they're roughly half the price and behave almost identically on this paper. The critical thing is to work fast. Let the ink dry between passes. If you go back over a wet marker stroke you'll lift the paper texture and end up with a blotch that catches every subsequent color.

White gel pen — This is the one tool beginners consistently overlook. The artwork has a lot of black ink and deep shadow areas. A white gel pen lets you add highlights without fighting the underlying color. I use a Sakura Pigma Micron white for fine detail work and a slightly broader one for larger bright spots. Use this sparingly because overdoing it makes the page look like someone spilled milk on it.

A Problem I Hit and How I Fixed It

Page "M is for Magic" has extremely tight linework around the central figure and the surrounding magical elements. About two years ago I started working on that page with a fine-tip brush pen for the dark areas, then went back in with colored pencils. The brush pen ink sat on top of the paper and repelled the pencil pigment. No amount of pressing or layering would make the pencil colors adhere to those shaded regions. I had roughly thirty minutes of work stuck on an unworkable surface and almost tore the page out of frustration. The workaround was simple but not obvious unless you know the chemistry. I took a cotton swab, dampened it slightly with isopropyl alcohol, and very gently wiped the brush pen areas. This lifted most of the pen ink without damaging the paper surface, and the colored pencils bonded normally afterward. The area wasn't perfectly white where the pen had been but it was close enough that the final result looked intentional rather than damaged. Test this on a scrap piece of paper first if you can find any — the book's paper is consistent enough that a test scratch on the inside cover works just fine.

Ordering Matters More Than People Think

Most guides tell you to work light to dark or dark to light. Neither is quite right for this particular book because the artwork varies so much from page to page. What actually works is grouping your sessions by technique and color palette, not by page number. Pages with primarily warm tones — oranges, reds, yellows — can be done in one sitting without switching tools or cleaning brushes between colors. Pages with cool tones serve the same purpose. Mixing warm and cool pages in the same session leads to that accidental color contamination where your pink ends up with a slight blue tint because your pencil case is still holding residue from the previous page. I keep a small separate container for each palette and that alone prevented me from ruining about four pages in the first month.

What This Book Isn't Good For

It's worth noting that this isn't a beginner's first coloring book. The line density on several pages assumes you already know how to blend and layer. If you've never colored with anything more complex than a box crayon, start elsewhere and come back to this when you have some basics down. The frustration factor is real and unnecessary at that stage. Also, if you plan to display the finished pages, the paper isn't archival grade. It will yellow over time the same way any mass-market coloring book paper does. Framing them under glass is fine for a few years but don't expect them to hold their color quality for a decade. If longevity matters to you, scan the finished pages before the paper degrades and work from a digital copy instead.

Final Notes on Technique

The book's alphabetical structure is mostly aesthetic. There's no narrative that benefits from reading through sequentially. Feel free to jump to whichever page appeals to you. Some of the better-known artists have simpler pages that make good warm-ups while others like the work by Scott M. Fischer require significant time investment. Keep a single eraser nearby — a vinyl or plastic one, not a kneaded eraser, because the kneaded type smears the pencil dust around rather than removing it. A small craft knife also comes in handy for cleaning up small mistakes where you've gone outside the lines, especially on the tighter pages. Gently scrape away the excess pigment without digging into the paper fibers. The book runs about one hundred twenty-eight pages in the complete edition with roughly sixty-four coloring pages. At a reasonable pace of one to two pages per session you're looking at a couple months of casual work if you're not rushing. Taking your time on the complex pages pays off noticeably in the final result. The ones where you rush tend to look rushed no matter what tools you used.