On Thursday morning, I discovered that the deadline for getting my Swap! artwork to my publisher, in time for them to prepare it for presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair, was today. Yikes! I thought I had a little longer, and have been trying to get as much done as possible but, come Friday afternoon, I had to stop and post what I'd done to date.
It's not too bad: I've completed over 7 spreads, so enough to get a good flavour of how the finished book will look.
Luckily, with John to help me, I was relieved of the task of cutting all the mounts, labelling all the artwork and packaging everything up, (which seems to take ages), so I was able to continue with the artwork up to the last minute. By Thursday evening I'd finished the spread I started that morning, the final spread of the book, and wasn't sure how best to spend my final day.
It's always a problem when half my artwork is sent on ahead - I'm left with no colour reference for the rest of the illustrations, so have to down-tools until it's returned. So, I hatched a cunning plan... I decided to spend my last day colouring something I wouldn't send with the rest:
I worked on the vignettes for the back endpapers, doing all 6 together, since they are so similar. Sparky is in lots of positions, so I get all his markings recorded, plus the ballet costume colours, ready to do the ballet spread next.
The last piece of artwork for
Baby Goes Baaaa!, Nana Crocodile, who got left right to the end, has now been finished. I'm especially pleased with her croc slippers:
They have more than a passing resemblance to the chicken space-boots I designed for When You're Not Looking!.
Today, everything has to be given a final once-over, then all the new pieces mounted up and wrapped up with the artwork I completed earlier, into a lovely big parcel and posted off to Egmont, the publisher. Fortunately, I know that at least Sarah, my designer, likes how it's come on, as she has been peeking at the progress, here on the blog (hi Sarah!).
Yes, my bears have left home and are off into the Big Wide World.
I spent yesterday mounting everything up, which takes ages.
E
ach piece of artwork first needs to be trimmed (I cut my pastel paper 10mm wider than I need all round, so I can trim it back to a nice, crisp edge). The ruler has to be wiped with a bit of loo-roll after every single cut, as it picks up chalk from the illustration.
Here comes a quite unnecessary, arty shot of my waste bin full of trimmings...
I lay the trimmed artwork face down on the overlay paper (cut by my dear hubby) to stick masking tape loops on the back, then flip it over and position it on the mount card.
I wipe any blotted-off chalk from the overlay with more loo-roll (so handy), then position the overlay paper on top of the illustration, to press the artwork in place, so I never touch the surface of the chalk.
The overlay is secured with magic-tape along the top edge:
I've learned to use a steel rule to weight the overlay paper down at this point, or the tape's static sucks the paper up and makes a right old mess (requiring much swearing, scrunching up, binning and re-cutting).
Once mounted, I give each illustration a last once-over, a final check for missing buttons, whiskers, teeth etc. In this case it was missing pussy-cat eyebrow hairs:
I label each mount with the project info and my details, but also with a BIG RED WARNING for printers to alert them to the perils of pastels!
Then it's all sandwiched between two huge and very stiff sheets of cardboard, before being wrapped in brown paper and lots of sellotape for good measure. It ended up over 2.5 feet long:
I struggled with it to my local post office: it weighed a ton and cost £21 to post, but you should have seen the wide grin on my face as I walked back home.
I do have mixed feelings about this bit though: huge relief that it's all done, but vague terror in case it gets damaged or lost in transit. And I still can't quite believe it's gone. You can tell I'm over-excited by the length of this post! A glass of wine (or two) tonight I think...
Beautiful work.
Deadlines are always times of huge stress!
Thanks for sharing all your fabulous illustrations. I'm starting to play around with dry pastels and I wanted to know if you recommend any specific fixative?
I use Daler Rowney, which I think is marginally less problematic than Windsor and Newton. They are the ones commonly available here. Both change the colours a fair bit though.
I wish you success at the fair .
Amazing!! very beautiful illustrations!
these are so lovely! your blog is so fascinating! :)
love hearing how professionals pull things together!
looks like it'll be a great book! ballet with dogs- SO cute!
Here's to their well-earned success at Frankfurt!
Thanks B x