Behind The Scenes: Making A Coloring Book: a house log

Our coloring book has been out a couple of months now, and I realized we have not truly talked about how it got made. I cannot say we ever truly thought about how a coloring book is made, so finding ourselves in the middle of doing one was quite the surprise.

In case you missed our previous mentions, Color at Home is an 80-page coloring book for adults, filled with everything from full room drawings, decorated vignettes, design mood boards, frameable art prints, and collections of things like pillows, chairs, and lighting. It is $12.99, but places like Amazon have it for under $10 now (stocking stuffer alert!). we have some peeks at it throughout this post, but you can also browse pictures on Instagram under #YHLColoringBook, like these below. We are loving the gold fridge. Quite Snoop Dogg.

A coloring book publisher (the husband & wife team behind Paige Tate & Co) approached us with the idea and we realized it could be a cool, low-risk way for people to experiment with color (without repainting their walls or buying new furniture). It can certainly build confidence and break through paint paralysis if you try out new color combos or decorating schemes on paper before committing to them in real life. Plus it can be majorly relaxing and lively to press pause on real life and dive into a virtual world of fairly rooms you never have to dust or vaccuum.

One might wonder how you “author” a coloring book, especially when you are not the one doing the actual drawing (we left that in the capable hands of interiors illustrator Joan Borawski, who was amaaaaazing to work with). Our roles, apart from the brief written parts (including some color pointers and warm-up exercises in the front, one of which you can see below)…

…can likely best be described as serving as the “art directors.” Our first task was to determine the overall outline and flow of the book so that we knew what was going on each page. That meant we had to nail down how many rooms, vignettes, mood boards, quotes, botanicals, collection pages, exercises, and other things we hoped to include. To keep it all straight we created an 80+ page master document for the illustrator that we sent back and forth with revisions, notes, and all that good stuff.

Sometimes we created mood boards or a collage of accessories and furnishings for the illustrator to render together in a room, and sometimes we began with a photo (perhaps even one from our house), so there are some spaces you folks might recognize. For example, here is a photo that we began with for a dining room spread in the book. It is in fact an alternate view of a dining room that we featured in our second book.

We swiftly realized early on that we could not assume that every photo we liked would automatically translate into an interesting black-and-white line drawing (some got extremely busy when converted to an illustration, and others looked a lot more plain without color). So with each photo we provided a second version of the picture with notes on top of it for Joan, the illustrator, about what we thought should be tweaked. Here is an actual example of one we sent:

Frequently times Joan would send a rough sketch back before she brought in all of the detail (like the rug) – simply so we all could figure out what was working and what else should be changed/nixed/brought in as the illustration came together.

This was one of the first pages we did, so we were all still learning how to anticipate what would become problematic or hard-to-color in the final version (like the sconces or art being too ornate, or the challenge of walls and ceilings that might look too blank and boring to color). Even little things like the realization that a perfectly centered flower arrangement or chandelier would get lost in the book’s binding popped up in those early days. So we’d mark up the rough drafts and send them back to Joan with more notes:

Back would come another version. Can you believe she draws all of this stuff by hand?? It was remarkable to watch these rooms come together.

In this case we had another round of edits, like adding in the rug pattern that was intentionally left out until the final stage (we all agreed to see what the wallpaper did to the illustration before choosing how busy/ornate the rug should be). Sherry and I mocked something up in Photoshop (below) and also brought in arrows to indicate where we’d like the chevron on the chairs to be cleaned up a bit for the final version.

A little while later, back came the final version that is in the book:

So this particular image made quite the evolution from its original photo inspiration.

Some pages were more involved, and some were less. For instance, we included some rooms from our own house – like our living room, dining room, bedroom, sunroom, and office (below). We hoped those to feel familiar, but we still found that we need to add art or adjust a few things to make them either more detailed or less busy in line drawing form.

We are SO EXCITED for people to get this book and start filling it in. We had some folks test-color it, and it has been excellent to see everyone’s spin on things (distinct color schemes truly can make the same rooms look so distinct). So please please PLEASE share your pages with us on social media. Simply tag them with #YHLColoringBook so we do not miss them.

Oh, and one last thing. I know you seasoned colorers likely have your preferred markers or colored pencils for these things. But for anyone diving in for the first time: we have found that colored pencils (even basic Crayola ones) are fairly error proof for the whole home decor subject of the book. We are able to make more “realistic” shading and blending with pencils, whereas markers frequently ended up looking too primary for us (kinda like a room Caillou might live in). Although as demonstrated from the gold fridge pic near the top of this post – pro coloring book folks can certainly make watercolors and markers work amazingly well. And even if you are not a pro, there are plenty of pages in here to practice…

Speaking of the pages, they are thick premium paper and they are also perforated, so it is straightforward to tear out sheets if you prefer working that way. It also makes it straightforward to remove some of the frameable quote pages that we included, which mimic art seen hanging in nearby full-room pages (like the “Do Less With More Focus” art you can see in the room on the left below). We thought it would be lively to include a few larger versions of the art you see hanging in a room, so you can color it, rip it out, and hang it yourself if you are so inclined. We also have a few botanical pages that you can color and frame as well.

There are also some mood board pages so you can experiment with color combos and patterns that way, too. For example, if you know what accent colors you want in your kitchen, you could color the fabric swatches with those tones, and then try out some cabinet and tile colors to see how you like them with those accent colors – simply to see how it all might look together.

We hope you folks enjoy Color at Home as much as we enjoyed making it. It was such a lively, random project to be part of and we could not be more psyched that it is out (all of the order links are below for ya).

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-A-Million | Indigo (Canada)
Amazon (UK) | Book Depository (Worldwide) | Fountain Books (Autographed)

And a special thank you to our editors Reagan and Sada at Paige Tate & Co and our remarkable illustrator Joan Borawski, who all feel more like family friends than work friends. Could not have done this without you folks. #colornerdsforthewin

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