About the archive

What this is

HORRORCOLOR is an independent publishing project making horror coloring books. The books are published as numbered volumes of a series called THE HORROR ARCHIVES. Each volume takes one theme and builds it into a set of worlds, with six illustrated scenes per world (ten worlds, 60 motifs per book), so you color your way through a story instead of a stack of unrelated pages.

The first volume, Cursed Places, is in production. Volumes 002 to 013, from Unholy Creatures to The Last Wrong Sunrise, are planned. Nothing is for sale yet; this site will say so plainly until it is.

How the pages are drawn

A coloring page is not a finished illustration. The scenes are drawn so that most of the page stays open for you: clean, varied outlines, very little solid black, and large forms such as skies, walls, water and clothing split into separate shapes you can fill. The detail is there, but it is sized to color, not just to look at.

Every scene still has to frighten. Each one is built around a single horror idea you can recognise at a glance.

Where the look comes from

The covers and this site take their inspiration from 1950s pulp horror comics and the horror paperbacks of the 1970s: hand-inked drama, loud lettering, a few bold inks on cheap paper. That is an influence, not an affiliation. HORRORCOLORis not connected to any publisher, artist, comic, film or franchise from that era.

Who it is for

Horror fans who like to slow down with a pen in hand. The books contain gothic, creature, body and splatter horror imagery. They are not made for children.