Custom Watercolor Wedding Maps: How We Illustrate the Lowcountry and Beyond

Custom Hand Painted Watercolor Map of Savannah Georgia by Lolli Pop Letterpress

There is something about a place that matters to a couple in a way no other detail quite captures. The tree where he proposed. The restaurant where you had your first date. The church where you will be married. A custom watercolor map for your wedding doesn't just show your guests where to go, it tells them a story about the wedding weekend and what is special to you.

This is how we make them.

The Conversation

Every map starts with a conversation about a place. Not just which venue but which view. A close up of an area or a view of the whole destination. The street your venue sits on or the surrounding neighborhood that gives it context.

We talk about what matters, whether there's a particular tree worth including, an inspired bird, an alligator that has a name and has earned his spot on the map. We talk about color, what palette the suite is working toward, what feeling the map should carry. Warm and golden or cool and coastal. Lush and botanical or sparse and architectural. All of these answers help build a design that will be truly yours.

We also look at reference photos. Aerial views, inspirational photos of palettes and design, venue photos for the right perspective, anything that will help build the foundation before paint touches paper.

The Sketch

The first thing that goes down on paper is a pencil sketch, the overall composition, the venues, the animals and/or botanical elements, any elements that were discussed and maybe some special add ons are realized here and put to paper. This goes to the client with an initial color palette, swatches labeled for where each color will live on the map. The marsh in this green. The sky in this blue. The road in this taupe.

From here we refine. Maybe we want to zoom in or out on the map, a different angle of the bird or alligator named Fred, wanting to add a crab on the shoreline. Maybe the palette needs to shift warmer or a forgotten venue needs to be added. This is the conversation stage, once we move to paint the changes will be more complex.

The First Painting

Here's a peek into my process. I don't just paint one watercolor, I typically paint two, sometimes more, depending on how badly the first one goes. The first painting is for me to work out my process, swatching out colors and values, what details to highlight, essentially getting into the flow. It's the version where I make mistakes and create happy accidents before the final version begins.

The Final Painting

The final painting carries everything the first one taught me. The colors are more confident. The composition is set. The details, the illustrated elements on the spoonbill's feathers, the brushstrokes in the water, come together here where as the first painting they were finding their style.

I typically paint every part of the map I watercolor separately, the bird, the church, the local restaurant, the alligator named Fred, this way I can adjust their placement digitally and create separate pieces that you can use throughout your suite. For example the watercolor church can land on your invitation or matchbook and program on your wedding day.

Custom Watercolor Venues for Watercolor Map Hand Painted by Lolli Pop Letterpress

The Scan

Scanning the watercolor is the next step to making your art digital. One thing to note is watercolors never scan true to color, the angled light of the scanner tends to wash out colors, flatten artwork and create shadows from the texture of the paper with its directional light. This is where tricks and having Photoshop comes in handy.

The tricks: First we scan, then we flip and scan again. This creates two separate copies of the shadows forming in two opposite directions and the shadows fall in different places. We then take both scans into Photoshop and overlay one on top of the other, the top one at 50%. The shadows from each scan cancel each other out. What's left is the painting without the shadow texture.

Once this is done I go in and adjust color through the brightness, curves and levels tools. If needed will go in and individually adjust hue and saturation on certain colors rather than the whole image.

How it Prints

Because a watercolor is a gradient, variations of color blending together, it needs to be digitally printed. A letterpress plate can't replicate a gradient but we can add letterpress elements on top.

Street names, borders, illustrated elements that have been converted to vector, monograms, names and dates, all of these can be letterpress printed on top of the digitally printed watercolor. The combination of the two processes is what gives the suites their depth and quality and feel. The map is painterly and alive. The letterpress elements are deep and impressed creating interesting patterns across the watercolor. Together the feel like nothing else.

There are many different layouts maps can take. Some run full bleeds of the page others are contained inside a decorative frame pressed or painted. Some have been duplexed onto heavier stock or made into a detailed tri-fold. These are discussions made during the sketch and design phase and then put into creation.

Custom Watercolor Maps for the Lowcountry Wedding

We have illustrated watercolor maps of Palmetto Bluff, Savannah, Beaufort, St. Simons Island, Charleston and more, each one painted from reference and refined through the process above.

If one of our existing maps speaks to you we can make it yours, different animals or a different venue highlighted. The bones are there and we tailor them to your story.

If your venue is elsewhere in the Lowcountry, the Golden Isles or beyond, every location has something story worth painting. We just need to find the right view.

Start the conversation at lollipopletterpress.com/the-custom

-Ash, Lolli P