Finished my First Spread!

I had a bit of a time, trying to get the first spread of Class One Farmyard Fun finished off. It was SO fiddly. Unfortunately, there are quite a few spreads in the book with this level of complexity (I have only myself to blame, since I designed them!). Fiddly and pastels do not go very well together, so my pastel pencils had to be brought into the action quite a bit. The pencils are great for detail, but the colour is not as rich and dense as the pastel sticks, so I then have to go over the top of the pencil elements with regular pastel, to give it oomph, trying not to blob where I don't need it. 

Yep, a nightmare, and very slow, but worth it in the end: 

The other tricky thing is keeping track of who's who with the children in the class. There are so many of them, all with different complexions, hair colour and outfits, it will be very easy to get them mixed up along the way. So I added little colour swatches to my 'crib sheet' - the original sketch-sheet where I designed the various children. I can use this as an aide memoir on my desk, as I work my way through all the artwork.

I was working until 7pm on Saturday night, despite having a nasty cold (pause for violins...), because I was desperate to get this first spread finished, before I started Book Week and had to stop work until March 7th, because of being out every day in schools. 

I just got done in time and, on Sunday afternoon, I headed down to Bedford, ready for Monday's school event at Cotton End Primary. Since the school is near to where Julia Jarman lives, John and I drove down and stopped overnight with her, which was lovely (thanks Julia!). Every day of this week has been a different place - I've been zipping all over. It's always the busiest week of the year. Back to normal and making a start on my next spread on Monday.