All videos, except the 360 Photo Gallery, were created and shared by Thomas Pavitte.

Querkles are Colour-By-Numbers reinvented. Thomas Pavitte, from Auckland, New Zealand is a graphic designer, artist, and New York Times best-selling author and creator of 1,000 Dot-to-Dot books, Querkles, and Spiroglyphics. Pavitte has created an original Colour-By-Number method, and he has shared it with the world.

"At first glance, when you see these pages without colour or marking, they look like a bunch of overlapping, varying sized circles, randomly arranged, and indecipherable," (Thomas Pavitte) with numbers inside some of them. Inside each puzzle of circles is hidden a well-known face to reveal. As you fill in the sections marked in the circles, the hidden image gradually reveals itself.

Pavitte currently has five volumes of Querkles published to date. He has Animals, Cats, Icons, Masterpieces, and a Wallace & Gromit collection. These puzzles "take a satisfyingly long time to complete. [Pavitte’s] unique style, when combined with iconic subjects, results in images that are not only fun to [colour], but cool enough to put on your wall." (Thomas Pavitte)

There are so many ways to create these beautiful pictures. You can pick any medium you like to mark the circles; pencil, coloured pencils, pens, markers, paint, charcoals, crayons, oil pens, pastels, and chalk. You can use as many or as few different colours as you like.

This new method of colour-by-number is as easy as the simple kits you can buy at most retailers, but these creations by Pavitte make the individual artist truly capable of creating a masterpiece. Each book offers 20 different hidden images, and a 19-inch by 14-inch poster sized hidden image.

Querkles is possibly the most addictive colouring book ever! Once you start one of these, it's hard to stop until you've completed the whole thing. The premise is simple: each page is made up of a mess of interlocking circles that make no visual sense whatsoever, until you start colouring.

Each circle is numbered 1-5: 1 for the darkest shade up to 5 which is the lightest. You can use any colours you like, or use cross-hatching techniques to achieve the shadows and highlights that makes up each face.

The difference between Querkles and your usual colour-by-numbers book is that they take longer to do, are much bigger than average, and the portraits end up looking like Warhol-esque works of art. Each book has 20 images altogether, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it took me two hours of continuous colouring to do just one.

These puzzles are much bigger than average too, each measuring over 15x11 inches! They have extremely good quality, thick paper coupled with perforated pages means they are perfect for removing and displaying in the home, and with hundreds of circles on one page alone, you are getting a lot of bang for your buck. The best part is, you have no idea who you are colouring until you are halfway through, unless you cheat and flip to the back of the book.

If you are thinking it looks complicated, I am with you there. When I opened my first book I was a bit taken aback; initially by the size, and then by the sheer number of circles filling the page, and no image to be seen.

I was surprised to find that it really is such an easy system. It is just time consuming. I experimented with using the different gradients of cross-hatching, different colors, and different types of material to colour with, until I settled on my favorite look.

If you address one number to color at a time, it is much easier to keep track of your colour scheme, as well as where you have left off, because as you color you will find it difficult to see the numbers underneath your markings.

The images in the icon book range from Winston Churchill to Amy Winehouse, all hidden in the cluttered circles waiting to be revealed with colour. Check out this time lapse video of Querkles going from nothing to iconic portraits.

Pavitte's Published Puzzle Titles Include:

Querkles: Icons - 2015

Querkles: Masterpieces - 2015

Querkles: Cats - 2016

Querkles: Animals - 2016

Querkles : Wallace & Gromit - 2017

1000 Dot-to-Dot Cities - 2014

1000 Dot-to-Dot Ilex Art & Illustration - 2014

1000 Dot-to-Dot Masterpieces – 2015

1000 Dot-to-Dot Marvel Comics - 2016

1000 Dot-to-Dot Wonders of the World - 2016

1000 Dot-to-Dot Marvel Spiderman - 2016

1000 Dot-to-Dot Marvel The Avengers - 2017

1000 Dot-to-Dot Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy - 2017

Spiroglyphics : Music Icons - 2017

Check out my 360 Photo Gallery of my own Querkles creations:

All videos, except the 360 Photo Gallery, were created and shared by Thomas Pavitte