Meg Sodano – Illustration & Design

For every one of my books, I start with creating a color palette. I use watercolors because they are so easy to blend and experiment with. You can see that I have a lot of colors on hand, but I tend to pick 3 main colors, and some extras that will be useful in small amounts.

For my book, If You Lived in the Sea, What Would You Be?, I chose Quinacridone Violet, Permanent Yellow, and Cerulean Blue. They are all different brands, because the same color name can look different depending on the brand. When I blend these colors, I get so many beautiful hues.

Look at my color options here! Navy blue, yellow-green, blue-greens, subtle reds and purples.

A quick note on the pigments: I rarely use a green straight out of the tube, because I can mix the other colors into lovely shades of green. Also, when I want a more neutral color, I might add Neutral Gray. Finally, Burnt Sienna always finds itself into my palette because it’s so useful. It dulls colors without making them gray.

I will say, I did not use watercolors for this book. I created them in Photoshop and used my color palette as a guide. Above are the base layers for the Periwinkle Snails and Acorn Barnacles. If you look at the color palette, you will see how I made these.

With more layers of color and textures, the snails and barnacles have become more lifelike in their natural environment.

Here are 2 images of the Bottlenose Dolphins, in different painting stages. The one below has more layers in the water and more developed eyes and shadows around the snout.

In this image of a tidepool I used Quin Violet for sea stars, urchins, and crabs. It is also blended with Perm Yellow for the coralline (pink) algae and Cerulean for the mussel shells. However, the focus in this illustration are the Giant Green Anemones. Perm Yellow and Cerulean are responsible for these bright green, tentacled animals.

If you are lucky enough to have a copy of If You Lived in the Sea, Who Would You Be?, you can find all these colors in my illustrations. If you would like to have a copy, it is available on Bookshop.org, IndieBound.org, BN.com, or (in a pinch) Amazon.com.