Posted by Lisa Bergman on Nov 21st 2023
Before-and-after: French Edition
I was so excited to pick up copies of our newest books today and compare them to the originals! So as promised, here are our before-and-after photos, so you can see how the new books compare with the old!
I'll start with Saint Nicholas first...I love the rich red and blue of this book! We worked hard to capture the boldness of those colors, and I think we achieved that!
Next is Saint Francis. Here we were working against ink that may have faded over the years...or maybe when they chose the colors, they chose ones that looked well together...but the brown reads too much like orange, leaving the contrast in many of the illustrations to strain the eye a bit. I didn't want to lose the warmth of the brown, but it needed to be darker in order to keep the color balance in a range that is easier on the eye. So you will notice the color difference...we moved from cinnamon to chocolate...but I hope you will agree that the darker brown reads much better.
And last but certainly not least, we have the book of the Blessed Virgin. This one took the most time and care. As mentioned in our previous post, we were not especially happy with the color choices in this book. It was the first of the three to be printed, and I think they wanted to vary the colors to add interest and beauty. A fitting goal in a book for Our Lady. But...again, whether time affected the colors, or they just made some unfortunate choices, the final effect of some of these colors is...erm...well, see for yourself. We loved the fresh bright seafoam green and blue of the cover, so we made the choice to move all the illustrations to those colors, and I don't regret that decision one bit.
Here are the endpapers...
Some of the pages retained that lovely seafoam...
But this bubblegum pink just wasn't doing it for me...
Same with this peachy yellow...it was ok but it didn't match nicely with the blue lines...
And...I don't really know what to call this color...it seemed in some ways appropriate for the subject here, because it's quite a dreary shade. But I didn't find it necessary to keep this ugly color just for this page...
So there you have it! If you and your children enjoy these books even half as much as we enjoyed creating them, then that will be very much indeed!