When I made my very first color charts for myself to use, early 2016, I couldn’t imagine that I was doing something different than other people who made color charts. But apparently I DID!

For several years now, my blank color charts have been used by hundreds of colorists and artists around the globe! And many requests have been made (and answered) for new charts, for a wide variety of materials.

Up until now I’ve made over 80 color charts, for colored pencils, watercolor pencils, markers (water based and alcohol based), paints, inks, pens, pastels, crayons, etc.. And as we speak I’ve got the preparation work for 17 (!) new ones lying on my desk to make.

This all led to something very special that I will share with you shortly!
 

How to make a color chart

Every color chart takes time to make. Some less than others, but usually it costs me about three to four hours to make a new chart, from start to finish. This includes research online to make sure I’ve got all colors, including newly released ones. Then I usually have to do some puzzling with the color order. With materials I have myself I make swatches on paper, cut them out and put them in my preferred order.

With materials I don’t have, I have to rely on provided color charts from the producer, which I then print, cut in pieces and then place them in my preferred order… this usually is VERY time consuming. Below some pictures of how I was puzzling with where to add the 12 new Promarker colors. This is an example of a chart where I don’t have all the markers, so I used the chart that’s provided by the producer. 

(Click the pictures to enlarge)

The official color chart was also on my monitor, as an extra check, since printed colors are slightly different from what’s on the screen.

Continuing on the computer

As soon as I like the order of the colors, I’ll open a spreadsheet on my computer. I often use an older one as a template, but more often than not I have to do a lot of adjusting to get it exactly the way I want it. After that I have to type all the color numbers into the sheet, save it to PDF, print a test page and make adjustments when needed.

Then print another test page, and finally make a screenshot of the top of the finished chart, resize and downsize that to be fit as product picture for the website, upload the PDF file and the picture to the webshop, create a product in the shop and test if all works correctly.

 

The next exciting step

Now that you know a little bit more about how I make the color charts, I want to tell you something VERY exciting (at least to me haha). Recently I started charging a fee for the charts. But I realize that if you’d want to buy all of them, you’d have to spend a lot of money in my webshop. And making charts was never about making money. It was just that it started to feel off balance more and more to keep giving them away for free.

So I’ve been pondering on this for a while and suddenly I came up with this BRILLIANT idea *if I may say so*! What if I would bundle them all, and make a BOOK of it? A color chart book with my complete collection!

That way you could have ALL my charts for waaaaaay less money than when you’d have to buy them separately. And you could pick and choose the ones you want to use, and save the rest for later, maybe as a wish list for new art supplies…

The game is on!

And that’s when things went wild, hahaha. I started writing down my ideas, made a to-do list, and just went on and began printing all the charts. Then I wrote a preface and asked a colleague artist to write a foreword (which she promised to do, and I’m so thrilled that she will!).

Next up is finding the right paper, and when I’ve got the paper I’ll have to run tests with printing. Probably buy a new printer to be able to print everything myself…

What I didn’t realize when I came up with this idea of making a book, is how much work would have to be done before it’s ready to launch! While I at first expected to be able to launch it within two weeks, it turns out to be two months! But that’s okay. I want it to be good, and not sloppy because of haste.

So here’s the official ANNOUNCEMENT……

Bring on the drumroll….. rat-tatta-rat-tatta-rat-tatta…

The book launch of
‘Tabby May Art’s Color Charts’
the unique book with
the complete collection of all my color charts
will be
available from December 1st 2019!

(The picture shows a spiral-bound book, but the real book will be DISC-BOUND)

 

This book, with over 90 colorable color charts, will be available as digital eBook (to be printed by you) but also as a physical book, bound with binding discs! Downloads of the eBook will be available on the day of the launch. Shipping of the paper books will start Monday December 2nd 2019!

In the next blog I’ll share more details about this unique, incomparable book.

Make sure you’ll receive updates!

Pre sale (with 30% discount!) of both books, eBook and paper book, will start as soon as I’m ready with everything that needs to be done beforehand. So keep an eye on this website, I’ll keep you posted on the progress!

My advice is to join my mailinglist as a Very Much Appreciated Follower (it’s on the upper right corner of this page!).  Subscribers of my mailing list will be the first ones to be informed about the start of the pre sale!

Well, that’s what I wanted to share with you for today 😉