Picking Palettes for Seasons in the City

One of the most time consuming parts of working on my new book Seasons in the City was choosing the colour palette to use through the book.

The book is divided into the 4 seasons (spring, summer, autumn, winter) and within those seasons there are 6 cities from different countries and continents all around the world. Each season has its own distinct colour palette of 16 or so colours, and then those same 18 colours are used on each illustration in that season. Four seasons, four unique palettes, and more than 70 individual colours that make up the book!

I spent a lot of time refining the different tones and seeing how it started to impact the flow of the book as the illustrations took shape. I spent a lot of time with my paint swatches, mixing and matching to get the feeling of each season I was looking for. The finished book is a colourful journey as the seasons cycle through the year. I’ve had the best time researching, writing and illustrating this book and hope you’ll love it too.

Seasons in the City is published this September by Hachette. Available for pre-order now.