Thank Goodness! (But There's Still More...)

I am well and truly frazzle-brained after that marathon but, finally, all the digital cut-outs for Baby Goes Baaaaa! are now done. Phew. It took longer than usual, because every single page needed doing, rather than just the odd image here and there.

However... just when I thought it was all over, I remembered there are a couple of illustrations that need incidental text adding, like the paint pot you can see in this rough of page E, F, G. As any illustrator knows, you never draw wording on your illustrations, because of co-edition translations, but that means overlays are required, so the words can be printed on afterwards.

There are two little pots with wording on: one for the paint above, another for the anteater's sticky treacle (which I think will be syrup in the US):

Now, for most sensible people, who don't work in pastels, overlays are not something they need worry about: the designer is quite happy to take care of it. But, pastel illustrations look a bit weird with standard, hard-edged fonts on top - the wording floats above the surface of the drawing.

So, like the control-freak John is always reminding me I am, I do my own overlays...

...hand-drawing the text in Corel Painter...

...so they have an identical texture to the rest (I scan in my textured pastel paper, so I get identical marks). Glutton for punishment? Definitely. Worth it though.

If you too are a glutton for punishment, there is more about how I do the overlays on this post from when I was at this same stage with Bears on the Stairs.