The Tell-Tale Heart - panic!

I got to work again today, my goal being two pages (or one full layout) a day. With writing on the first side it's now very difficult to see all the way through to the penciled words, so I traced over them in pen to make them darker. So when all is said and done I will have written this out three times to get the finished product. Then onto to real paper at last. When I got to the bottom I realized that I'd added an extra cut and there wasn't as much room as I'd planned on. So much for my careful layouts! But it ended up being easy enough to work around.

I put up this photo because I realized that last time I'd skipped a step. This is what is looks like between the background and the finished page. It's actually kind of lame and spindly here, before the scribbles and splatters and red highlights.

I went over quite a few of the letters to make them bolder, added scribbles, and started splattering the page a bit, just throwing a bit of ink at it. I remembered to put a piece of paper under the cuts to it wouldn't get on the pages underneath, and thought I was being quite clever until the ink spread under the paper onto the previous page. It actually looks pretty good, so no problems there except to rescan the page to reflect the changes.

The real problem came when I splattered some in the middle of the pages, and it seeped under and spread. Then I freaked out a little and tried to take some of the excess ink off, which just spread it around. argh! Stupid stupid stupid! So I panicked a little and turned it into a beetle cut-out because that's a little what it looked like. But it took up way more paper than if I'd thought about it and made a smaller circular gear, which would have been easier to rework the words around. Plus then it ended up going off the page, and I had to continue it on the next one. I didn't want to end up then having to continue it on the next and the next throughout the whole book. So I did it only in outline on the next page so that it doesn't look weird to have half a bug in the middle of a page. I removed the smears with some sandpaper and covered the last of it with some watercolour. It would have been so much easier if I'd just not touched it. I don't even have anything to blame it one, what with my gin and tonic sitting there untouched. Maybe next time I'll have it first, after all cucumber's are veggies and veggies are good for you.

Back to the point. I finished another page, and here it is.