The Handmaid’s Tale by Nault: A Cruel Watercolor Beauty

The Challenge of Illustrating a Patriarchal Dystopia

When art meets dystopia, a fascinating tension emerges between the beauty of technique and the horror of the message. This is precisely the case with Renée Nault’s graphic adaptation of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a work that challenges our perceptions by presenting an oppressive world through delicate watercolors. The Canadian artist has managed to translate Margaret Atwood’s chilling narrative into a visual language that is, paradoxically, beautiful in its cruelty.

This adaptation stands out for its ability to merge the written with the visual, creating its own language that transcends both mediums. Comics, as an artistic expression, possess the unique ability to abstract concepts and simultaneously show what is said and what is felt, allowing Nault to explore dimensions that neither the original novel nor the television adaptation could reach in the same way.

The Unique Vision: Between Fidelity and Reinvention

Renée Nault made a radical decision when embarking on this project: she consciously avoided watching Hulu’s television series or the 90s movie. She sought her own interpretation, free from external influences, that would maintain the essence of the original text but speak with its own voice. “I think one of the reasons I was chosen as an artist may have been my non-literal storytelling style and my interest in representing characters’ thoughts and feelings,” Nault explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I really enjoy the quiet, reflective moments of a story; there are many opportunities there to convey the mental state of characters through visual cues, both obvious and subtle.”

This introspective approach was fundamental to conveying the emotional complexity of a society where oppression has been normalized. Instead of opting for explicit representations of violence, Nault chose a more subtle and, perhaps because of this, more disturbing path: showing systematized cruelty through beautiful watercolors that brutally contrast with the horrors they represent. Interested in exploring ways to convey complex emotions through drawing? Discover practical tools here.

The Technique of Water and Fire: Watercolors as Language

The medium chosen by Nault to bring Gilead to life was no coincidence. Watercolors, with their transparency and vividness, allowed her to create a visually captivating universe that hides a dark reality. “I love the brightness and transparency of watercolors. You can achieve incredibly vivid colors with them,” Nault commented in a conversation with Rachel Bellwoar. “They have a wonderfully spontaneous quality, as the paint can only be partially controlled. If you embrace this ‘imperfect’ quality, it can lead to some of the best parts of the image.”

This technical choice was risky. Nault opted for traditional illustration with ink lines and watercolors, giving up the security of digital correction. The result is images that occasionally present “imperfections” which, far from diminishing their impact, add personality and authenticity to the representation. This decision has had its critics, who questioned the choice to represent such a brutal world through such a delicate and aesthetically pleasing style. However, this visual contradiction can be interpreted as a perfect metaphor for Gilead: a system that presents itself as an orderly utopia while executing indescribable horrors.

Color as a Control System: Gilead’s Restrictive Palette

One of the most outstanding aspects of Nault’s work is her deliberate and symbolic use of color. In Gilead, colors are not mere aesthetic choices; they are tools of social control that define, limit, and stratify each individual. This chromatic coding is both visually striking and deeply disturbing.

“I wanted a warm palette for the flashback scenes, and I wanted them to have a wide variety of colors,” explains Nault. “This contrasts strongly with the Gilead scenes, where the coloration is almost completely limited to reds, blues, greens, and neutral tones. The past is more ‘normal,’ while Gilead’s present has been reduced to a few symbolic colors, corresponding to rigidly imposed roles.”

This chromatic restriction brilliantly reflects the loss of individuality and systematic dehumanization. In Gilead, people are not individuals but walking symbols, categorized by their social function:

• The Handmaids: Wear scarlet red with white bonnets, a uniform that Nault deliberately designed to look “strange, heavy, uncomfortable, unflattering.”
• The Wives: Distinguished by their sky-blue attire, directing households from a golden prison.
• The Aunts: With their somber brown, these asexual women train and control the handmaids, perpetuating the system that oppresses them.
• The Marthas: In charge of domestic tasks, they wear greenish tones that make them invisible.

In these panels, we observe the so-called “Ceremony,” a euphemism for ritualized rape. On the left, the Commander rapes the handmaid while his wife, furiously resigned, holds the girl’s hand and body in a perverse pantomime of participation. The handmaid’s inert expression dramatically contrasts with the barely contained rage of the wife. On the right, another disturbing scene: wives positioned behind handmaids during childbirth, simulating that they are the ones giving birth, thus legitimizing the institutionalized kidnapping of babies. The most heartbreaking thing is to contemplate how all these women, regardless of the color they wear, are trapped in a system that pits them against each other, turning them into witnesses, accomplices, and victims of their own oppression.

The Anatomy of Oppression: Decomposing the Human Figure

One of the most chilling sequences in Nault’s adaptation is the one in which the handmaid’s figure is fragmented according to her functions: first we see her legs slightly separated but modestly covered, then the bonnet that hides her hair (traditionally associated with female sensuality), and finally her hand holding a basket for running errands. This visual decomposition culminates in a geometric simplification: the handmaid reduced to a red triangle, an abstract symbol of her limited existence.

This visual fragmentation is not just an aesthetic resource; it is a political statement about the objectification of women in Gilead. By decomposing the female body into useful parts, Nault visually reflects the ideology of a regime that reduces women to their reproductive functions, denying them their integral humanity.

The forced uniformity of handmaids is masterfully illustrated in other sequences where it is impossible to distinguish one from another. Their faces, hidden by restrictive bonnets, show empty and resigned looks. Their conversations, limited to ritually approved exchanges (“Blessed be the fruit,” “May the Lord open”), reveal how even language has been colonized. Want to learn how to communicate identity or its absence through your illustrations? Delve into these techniques here.

In these pages, Nault masterfully captures collective dehumanization: the handmaids are indistinguishable from each other, even when they cross paths on the street. Their dialogues, mechanized and superficial, hide the true terror of their lives. Each could be a spy or revolutionary, but visually they all share not only the scarlet uniform but also that empty look that reveals the systematic annihilation of their individuality.

Past vs. Present: Chromatic Contrast as Narrative

One of the most powerful narrative resources in Nault’s work is the deliberate contrast between scenes of the dystopian present and flashbacks of the “normal” past. This change is not only thematic but viscerally chromatic: while Gilead drowns in a restricted and symbolic palette, memories explode in a profusion of colors that represent lost freedom.

In this sequence, Nault creates a powerful juxtaposition between the oppressive present and the free past. In the flashbacks, colors dance freely across the page, human figures touch naturally, and faces express authentic emotions. Love, desire, and human connection exist without institutional restrictions. This chromatic abundance is not a mere ornament; it is a statement about the diversity of experiences and possibilities that have been taken away.

The contrast becomes even more biting when we contemplate how, even in Gilead, human desires persist underground. In another revealing sequence, we see how the Commander transgresses his own rules:

Here, Nault exposes the hypocrisy of the patriarchal system: the Commander seeks to satisfy his sexual desires beyond the official “Ceremonies,” putting the handmaid’s life at risk. If his wife discovered this transgression, the blame and punishment would inevitably fall on the woman of lower status. This double standard is manifested in every stroke and color: the men who designed Gilead to control female sexuality are the first to subvert their own rules when it suits them.

The Politics of Space: Composition and Power

The visual composition in Nault’s work is not arbitrary; it meticulously reflects the power dynamics in Gilead. The spaces occupied by the wives are clearly distinguished from those allowed to the handmaids, and this separation is reinforced through deliberate chromatic contrasts. Blue and red do not coexist harmoniously; they clash, compete, and repel each other, just as the women they represent are forced into systemic antagonism.

In this image, the vibrant red of the handmaid violently bursts into the bluish domain of the wife. The colors do not mix or seek balance; they are as fundamentally separated as the social functions they represent. Reproduction and marriage, which in a free world could form part of a continuum of human experiences, are here artificially divided into rigid and mutually exclusive categories.

This use of space and color visually communicates what pages of explanatory text could barely suggest: the violent compartmentalization of the female experience in Gilead. Women are not only separated from each other by imposed roles; they are internally fragmented, with aspects of their humanity distributed among different chromatic castes.

Indoctrination: The Aunts as Architects of Submission

A particularly disturbing aspect of Gilead, brilliantly captured by Nault, is the role of the Aunts in perpetuating the oppressive system. These women, represented in desaturated brown tones suggesting an imposed asexuality, are responsible for breaking the will of new handmaids and reconfiguring their minds according to the precepts of the regime.

In these panels, the Aunts appear as skeletal, almost cadaverous figures, reflecting their inner emptiness. Their function is terrible: to convince women that everything bad that has happened to them is their fault, to break any possibility of female solidarity, and to establish a system of mutual surveillance where individual survival depends on collective betrayal.

The visual aesthetic of these scenes deliberately evokes concentration camps, with their ordered rows of prisoners and guards armed with instruments of torture (in this case, electric cattle prods). This historical reference is not coincidental; it reinforces the idea of Gilead as a genocidal regime that has industrialized the oppression and dehumanization of a specific sector of the population.

Nault’s work in these sequences is particularly disturbing because it does not resort to exaggeration; the horror lies precisely in the cold efficiency of the process, in the meticulous organization of a system designed to break spirits and turn human beings into tools. Explore here how to convey emotional tension through your drawings.

Beauty as Subversion: Controversies about Aesthetics

One of the most interesting criticisms directed at Nault’s work questions precisely what many consider its greatest virtue: the aesthetic beauty of her illustrations. How can something so horrible be represented in such a beautiful way? Doesn’t this constitute a kind of betrayal of Atwood’s dystopian message?

This apparent contradiction, however, can be interpreted as a deliberately subversive decision. By presenting oppression through a filter of formal beauty, Nault visually reproduces the fundamental hypocrisy of Gilead: a regime that dresses its brutality in the garments of virtue, tradition, and divine order. The delicate watercolors and carefully balanced compositions function as the visual equivalent of the pious rhetoric that the regime uses to justify its atrocities.

Furthermore, this “disturbing beauty” creates a Brechtian distancing effect, constantly forcing the reader to reconcile the aesthetic attraction of the images with the moral horror of what they represent. This internal conflict reproduces, in a way, the cognitive dissonance that citizens of Gilead would experience, forced to normalize the monstrous and reinterpret oppression as social order.

Nault’s decision to create visually striking uniforms for the handmaids reinforces this idea: “I wanted my design for the Handmaid’s uniform to look very strange: heavy, uncomfortable, unflattering. I also wanted it to have a strong visual shape that could be simplified down to something almost abstract: a broad red triangle. The hood introduces an additional element of confinement and discomfort.”

Beyond Simple Adaptation: A Work with Its Own Voice

What makes Nault’s work truly remarkable is her refusal to settle for being a mere illustration of Atwood’s text. Instead of limiting herself to visualizing what has already been written, the artist creates a dialogue between text and image that expands and deepens the original narrative.

Through techniques specific to the language of comics—such as panel fragmentation, changes in visual rhythm, or the use of negative space—Nault adds layers of meaning that complement and, at times, transcend the text. Visual metaphors (such as the simplification of the handmaid to a red triangle) communicate concepts that go beyond the literal, touching symbolic and psychological dimensions that resonate deeply with the reader.

This approach is also manifested in her treatment of silences and absences. In many sequences, what is not said and what is not shown are as eloquent as what is explicit. Empty spaces, lost gazes, rooms stripped of individuality: all these elements build a portrait of the inner desolation that characterizes life under a totalitarian regime. Discover resources to develop your own visual narrative style here.

The Female Experience Under the Microscope: A Visual Testimony

Another fundamental aspect of Nault’s work is her ability to capture the bodily, sensory, and psychological experience of existing as a woman in Gilead. Beyond representing events and characters, the artist immerses us in the physical and emotional reality of the protagonists, making the reader not only observe but feel the oppression.

This commitment to the embodied experience is manifested in subtle but significant details: the rigidity of bodies in the “Ceremony” scenes, the visible tension in shoulders and hands during forced exchanges, the way spaces shrink or expand according to the character’s emotional state. Nault doesn’t just illustrate a story; she translates sensations and emotions into a universally understandable visual language.

Particularly effective is her treatment of the female gaze. In Gilead, looking directly can be an act of rebellion; lowering one’s eyes, a survival strategy. The direction of gazes, eyes that meet or avoid meeting, and even the total absence of eye contact: all these elements build a complex network of meanings about power, resistance, and complicity.

Color as Protagonist: Emotional and Symbolic Palettes

Analyzing more deeply the use of color in Nault’s work, we find that it goes far beyond the simple code to identify social castes. Each tonality, each chromatic transition, each contrast is loaded with emotional and symbolic meaning.

The reds of the handmaids, for example, are not uniform or static; they vary according to light, context, and emotional state, oscillating between tones that suggest blood, fire, danger, or, paradoxically, vitality. The blues of the wives equally fluctuate, reflecting both institutional coldness and the personal melancholy of these privileged but equally imprisoned women.

Particularly revealing is the treatment of backgrounds: in Gilead, spaces tend toward monochrome and austerity, while in flashbacks they explode in diversity of tones and textures. This difference is not merely decorative; it visually articulates the contrast between a world where individuality flourishes and another where it has been brutally suppressed.

Moments of transgression also receive a distinctive chromatic treatment. When acts of resistance occur or forbidden bonds are formed, Nault introduces subtle alterations in her usual palette, as if suggesting that even in the visually regulated universe of Gilead, human rebellion finds ways to manifest itself. Interested in mastering the expressive use of color? Find specialized resources here.

Visual Legacy: Influence on Contemporary Imagery

It is impossible to ignore how the aesthetic developed by Nault has transcended the pages of her adaptation to influence contemporary visual culture. The distinctive scarlet uniform with the white bonnet has become a powerful symbol in demonstrations for reproductive rights around the world, demonstrating how an artistic interpretation can take on a life of its own as a tool for social protest.

This leap from fiction to reality demonstrates the power of visual language to communicate complex concepts and mobilize consciences. The image of the handmaid, reduced by Nault to its symbolic essence, allows for the immediate and universal expression of concerns about bodily autonomy, reproductive freedom, and resistance against patriarchal control.

Nault’s work thus exemplifies one of the highest functions of art: not only to reflect realities but to provide visual tools to interpret, question, and potentially transform them. Her adaptation is not merely a translation from one medium to another, but a work that amplifies and enhances the original message, endowing it with new dimensions of impact.

Watercolor as Metaphor: The Uncontrollable Flow of Humanity

A deeper analysis of Nault’s technical choice reveals another layer of meaning: the very characteristics of watercolor—its fluidity, its tendency to escape total control, its capacity to create unpredictable effects—function as a perfect metaphor for the persistence of humanity under oppressive regimes.

Just as water filters and finds its way despite barriers, human nature in “The Handmaid’s Tale” persists and resists despite Gilead’s attempts to contain and channel it. The “imperfections” that Nault accepts and incorporates into her work represent those moments of overflow, those small rebellions against the perfectly controlled that constitute, ultimately, the hope within dystopia.

This parallelism between technique and theme demonstrates a deep understanding of how the artistic medium can, in itself, become part of the message. Watercolor is not just an aesthetic choice; it is a conceptual commentary on the ultimate futility of systems that claim to completely eradicate human diversity and freedom. Looking to incorporate conceptual meaning into your technical choices? Expand your artistic horizons here.

Narrate with Your Own Style!

Renée Nault’s masterful adaptation of “The Handmaid’s Tale” demonstrates the transformative power of art to reinterpret narratives and endow them with new dimensions. Her bold choice to represent a dystopian world through the delicate beauty of watercolor teaches us that conventions are meant to be broken, and that sometimes the greatest subversion consists of finding beauty within horror.

Now it’s your turn to experiment. What would happen if you moved away from the dark and oppressive palettes traditionally associated with dystopian narratives? Could you, like Nault, use vibrant colors and delicate techniques to paradoxically intensify the emotional impact of a disturbing story?

The real artistic challenge is to maintain the essence and magnitude of dystopian horror while exploring new aesthetic paths. Perhaps you’ll discover that the contradiction between form and content doesn’t weaken your message, but amplifies it, creating that cognitive tension that forces the viewer to look beyond the surface.

Take your favorite tool—be it watercolor, digital media, or any other technique—and dare to narrate the terrible from the beautiful, the oppressive from the delicate, the dehumanizing from the deeply human of your stroke. Remember Nault’s lessons: sometimes, the greatest artistic revolution consists of refusing to represent darkness with darkness.