Ozalid proofs

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Caggages and Ozalids

I have to admit, there is something pretty terrifying about print. Make a mistake, and it’s permanent. You can look something over, and over, and over on screen, or on crummy black and white print-outs, and still you’ll find more mistakes in the colour proofs.

When I was 4, I was delighted to find a spelling mistake in one of my picture books had been carefully pasted over with a correction printed on a small rectangle of paper. Of course I had to unstick one side to see what was underneath (caggage). This little mistake gave me a sudden glimpse into the mysterious process of how books come to be – it was proof of human hands, human process. It was a huge realisation to me and I loved it. I wanted to know more about the poor soul who had to carefully cut and paste those little rectangles correctly spelling the word ‘cabbage’. Sadly, the rest of the glue holding that little piece of paper perished over time and the correction has slipped out of the book and become lost.

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Proof!

This is it, my first quick glimpse…4 years after the first exploratory sketches, and after many, many late nights and working-weekends the day has finally come, I have that first proof of Dream Boats. This is more exciting than I can properly express here.

I had just a quick look at it at the booth at the ALA and it’s now sitting on my dining room table waiting for daylight so I can get a proper look at the colour.

Despite the excitement, the process won’t truly be over until I have the final copy in my hands.

This is the first book that I’ve both illustrated and designed, so it is an extra thrill seeing it in print for the first time. So far, so good. But I’m looking forward to daylight when I can give it a proper looking over.

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This post is part of a series documenting my process of illustrating the picture book Dream Boats (author Dan Bar-el, pub. Simply Read Books). The entire series of posts is archived here.

View a slideshow of all the work in progress images including first sketches, reference material, mistakes, redraws, and tests, to final art at a much larger size, here.

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