Philo & Sophy lettering

The day after my birthday I finished all 14 paintings. Now on to lettering. So, they really weren't finished before, now they are getting there. I agonized over the fact I would have to paint over my paintings with words but as I started to put the text in, everything came together.

To lay out the text, I had to keep in mind the bleeds and margins according to lulu. The paintings are 12x18 to give a little wiggle room for this. I had to leave a little over an inch in the middle for the gutter, 5/8" on the sides, and 7/8" on the top and bottom. A while back, I figured out where the text would go using Illustrator. Now that the paintings are ready for lettering, I used tracing paper to hand draw all the text the way I wanted. I didn't want it to look like font, and it was fun to freehand it. But man did I underestimate how long this step would take. I think it took me a week without a lot of late nights to figure this out.