The Watercolor Artist's
Guide to Colour
Art direction, cover and concept design
The challenge with this book was to adjust existing, bespoke course material from a hand-painted, landscape format, originally created as slides, to a portrait book specification.
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I created a classical palette of fonts, alongside a handwritten annotation approach, to compliment the original presentation of material while adding the relevant editorial content.
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Rather than limit the layouts to scanned artworks, I commissioned photography into which I could superimpose some of the final artworks. I also superimposed physical art materials over layouts. This created a more physical feel to the pages and softened the appearance of the technical content.
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Some sections of text were heavily editorial so I adopted a magazine approach with pull quotes. Where the pages had a heavier image concentration, I opted for a hand-annotated style.
Author Testimonial
​I have just received my copy of The Watercolor Artist's Guide to Color and wanted to let you know how pleased I am with the final result. It was clear at our first meeting that you had a vision for how this might look and I don't think it could have been in better hands.
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I had thought for some time that there was a book somewhere amongst the folder of teaching aids, but I did not really have any vision for how it might look. You have provided that admirably. Thank you so much for your vision and work.
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Richard Taylor (Author and artist)