Francesca and Franziska met through Luna Press, and immediately her artistic skills left a mark with the whole team. We had been meaning to produce a new colouring book since Peter Andrew's Necronomicute and Franziska gave us the inspiration for the new theme. Imaginarium is a blend of different worlds, featuring children, adults and creatures in both Fantasy and SF settings. Spaceships and dragons included!
Franziska says:
"I was born and raised in Bochum, Germany, and got a degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies before I decided to pursue art instead.
I have been drawing all my life, and ever since there has been two constants in my art: I liked drawing animals as much as people, but fantasy people were infinitely more interesting than modern day and age people.
Although I mostly work digitally by now for efficiency, I still have a great fondness for traditional media. Working on Imaginarium has allowed me to share bits of everything: flowy, detailed linework, fantasy themes with dragons and mermaids (and spaceships), and giving people the opportunity to have physical interaction with my art. So grab your crayons and pencils!
A very few of the artworks are modified older drawings of mine that I revisited for the purpose of this book; some people who have known me for a few years might recognise them. However, the vast majority is brand new artwork that I have done especially for this book, so every picture was a new adventure.
Very often I made up scenes and designs on the spot, while some others are old stories and old ideas, to which I finally gave life. For some characters and animals shown here, I have an idea already what they would look like were I to colour them; for others, I deliberately didn’t think about it. In either case, I encourage everyone who bought this book to let their own imagination fly free. There are no “correct” colours, no matter which I had in mind when I first designed these characters and scenes. I would be thrilled to learn that everyone who bought the book coloured the images differently.
Please enjoy!"
Franziska Wenzel has a master’s degree in Medieval and Renaissance studies, but became a freelance artist instead. You can find her on Twitter @toradhart where she’s sharing a lot of art without trying to look professional.