Bologna Book Fair

I got my 'Jiggle-Joggle' octopus and my 'Ick!' anteater finished. Here's octopus:

I did him blue, as it was the one colour I knew I wouldn't need for a jelly (peppermint jelly? Ugh!). If you remember, it was the suckers I still had to do when we saw him last time. I sprayed him with fixative, so I was able to load more pastel over the top of what I'd already drawn, then added the suckers with pastel pencils, to enable me to get into that level of detail:

But unfortunately, I've have had to stop work on Baby Goes Baaaa! for the moment and here's why...

The massive, international Children's Book Fair at Bologna happens every spring, and is probably the most important showcase of the year for new picture book projects. Attentions are focussed months ahead on this unbelievably intense 4 day period. Not only finished books, but pretty much all projects-in-progress must be scrubbed behind the ears and put on best behaviour, ready for presentation.

So, even though I've not quite finished (I have just 4 illustrations to go), I have to mount up everything I've done so far and post it down to Egmont, in time for them to get scans done and create a mock-up for the Book Fair. The idea is to impress as many foreign publishers as possible, to get them interested in signing up for co-editions of the book.

In the meantime, here's what my baby anteater looks like:

I've added a pattern to the romper-suit since last time, and coloured in the gooey treacle. I've left off the label on the treacle jar as usual, to allow for translations, although, someone just told me that the folks in the USA don't know what treacle is, so it might have to be labelled 'syrup' over there.

Click here if you want to re-cap on how I've been geyting on with the project so far.