How I Design a Package – and Why It's More Than Templates
I often write here about painting itself. Today I'd like to take a look behind the scenes and share why I completely rethought my Atelier Plus package.
For a long time it consisted of just two printed templates. Beautiful templates, on good cotton paper. But over time I realized that a template alone is rarely what people are really looking for. They're looking for the good feeling that their picture will truly turn out well in the end.
It's not talent that decides, but the conditions
For me, that's the heart of it all. Whether a watercolor succeeds depends far less on talent than most people believe. It depends on the conditions: the right paper, a harmonious color palette, the right pigments, and clear, step-by-step guidance. That's exactly my success guarantee.
So I asked myself: what would a package need to contain so that someone who hasn't yet dared to make their first picture simply begins, and enjoys the result?
What I've learned in the past months
This conviction didn't come from a desk, but from many small observations. On Instagram, people respond most strongly to pictures that look easy and doable, as if you could pick up the brush yourself right away. What gets saved and shared is, above all, what invites you in and doesn't overwhelm.
My work on the Nature Palette series and a guided painting session with a group of children showed me the same thing: with a ready-made, harmonious color selection and a clear outline, even the youngest beginners create surprisingly beautiful pictures. Not because they're especially gifted, but because the framework carries them.
And something else shows up again and again: most people want the security of a template. They don't want to sit alone in front of the blank page. Just recently my mother told me on the phone that she'd often thought about painting. But watercolor seems so difficult to her, much harder than acrylic. And if she were to start, then definitely with a template.
That's exactly where the package comes in: it's meant to make the first step easy and to give the confidence that something beautiful really will come of it.
A little atelier to unpack
That's how the new Atelier Plus package came to be. It's not a stack of paper, but a small, coherent experience. In August, everything revolves around two plants: ribwort plantain and meadow cranesbill.
The package is part of my new Nature Palette series Vol. 2, The Friendly Wild Ones. After the first volume, A New Garden, which showed the plants from my own garden, from August on I'm devoting myself to twelve chosen plants of the meadow. I photograph each motif myself first and then draw it by hand into an outline. So every template also comes with a real reference image.
When you open it, a welcome letter on delicate tracing paper greets you first. Then the Seeds of Creativity: a few loving little things like a paintable bookmark, tiny hand-painted inspiration cards, and a sticker. They aren't just decoration; they take away the hesitation before you get to the actual picture.
To warm up, two swatch cards are ready. And then the heart of it: two handmade templates, printed waterproof on cotton paper. It's exactly this paper that forgives typical beginner's mistakes and makes the colors glow, so that even the first result surprises you.
Added to that are two plant portraits on kraft paper, two framable reference prints of the two motifs, and a large sheet for free design, sometimes as a collage to cut out, sometimes as a recipe sheet to paint on. And finally the two matching painting sessions that guide you through the motif step by step in the Atelier. One honest note here: these guided sessions are currently in German. An English voiceover is on the way, and in the meantime each one comes with an English step-by-step companion so you can follow along.
Everything is printed with waterproof pigment ink and finely coordinated. Deliberately restrained in color, because most of it should only come to glow while you paint.
Why I put so much care into it
Because I want this package to feel high quality, to make people paint along, and to leave them happy in the end that it worked. Not because someone suddenly became more talented, but because everything is designed for it to succeed.
The little extras lower the hesitation. The cotton paper catches small mistakes. The color palette is chosen so that even free mixing can hardly go wrong. And the painting sessions give the orientation that a blank page so often lacks.
To launch the new series, your first month of the Atelier is on me. And during the promotion, Atelier Plus is 50% off, with the complete August package included, sent to your door. The promotion runs until 31 July, and simply signing up is enough. Here is the promotion.
In the end, it's not really about sending out as much material as possible, and it's not about rules or about depicting a plant as accurately as possible. I could take a photo for that.
It's about letting the color flow and watching which path the pigments take. About feeling every single shade and the pure joy of the flowers. That's exactly what I developed my templates and this package for: so that this experience can move to the foreground, and the most beautiful feeling while painting remains, to begin and to see that it works.