Creating Watercolor for Soul Flower's Spring Catalog

Our Spring 2014 Soul Flower catalog is out and rockin'! Like previous catalogs, the creative team here at Soul Flower had a lot of fun putting this one together. Creating a catalog takes a lot of minds, bodies, and hands. Each Soul Flower bud has jobs to do: from curating the collection of products, creating outfits, organizing multiple photoshoots, taking photos, writing descriptions, editing to make sure there are no mistakes, graphic design, printing... All while keeping it funky and fun and totally Soul Flower.

And what's a Soul Flower catalog without art?! The watercolor backgrounds featured throughout aren't just Photoshopped; they were created by hand especially for this catalog!

We thought this spring could use some bright pops of color, so besides the models wearing some amazing colorful outfits, the pages are accented with bright backgrounds. These splashes of watercolor were created using real paint, real paper, and real (wet) water!

The process was pretty simple: I bought a sketchbook of watercolor paper and a fresh palette of watercolor paints and got messy. I could have used regular old paper I had already, but paper made especially for watercolor is thick and has a beautiful texture. I knew that in the end, these backgrounds would be blown up large and we'd be able to see the texture. It's those details that make it just lovely!

Above is a page from the catalog next to its original green watercolor painting. Since the backgrounds would be layered behind text and photos, I kept them simple and more like a wash. If the painting gets too busy, it makes the text on top harder to read.

I painted each paper with a different color palette, and laid them out to dry. If the pages started to curl up, I laid some pennies on the edges as weights. Ya use whatcha have!

In order to get them into the layout, the watercolor pages had to be digitized. Simplest way to get them into the computer in a high-resolution way is by scanning. After each page was dry, I scanned it in and cleaned up the edges in Photoshop.

After that, they were catalog-ready! I dropped them into the layout as backgrounds, choosing the colors that worked best for that page's outfits. In the end, we all loved how they turned out. It was the perfect mix of handmade, digital, and funky Soul Flower fashion.

We believe in doodles and hand-drawn artwork. And wearing whatever makes your heart sing. At Soul Flower, we're in the business of creating clothing that helps you express who you are. That's what our catalog is all about! So when we can infuse the catalog pages with even more handmade and positive vibes, we'll do it!

Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty,
❤ Leiah
artist at Soul Flower