Inserting extra pages without affecting the rest of the text

Question

I am working on a document of the two-column IEEEtran style and I want to "insert" two special pages.

So I have these two page-filling figures. I want each figure to appear on its own page, say page 2 and 3, and the remaining text to end on page 1 and continue normally on page 4 as if the two extra pages were not there. The figure pages are just inserts which should be numbered correctly, but otherwise should not affect the layout of the remaining text pages.

I do not want to start new pages with newpage and clearpage, because that would leave empty space before the two extra pages. Rather, I want text to "flow around" them.

This is a general question, so please excuse if I do not post a code example, because I do not think the actual code is very relevant here.

Answer 1

Does something like the following work for you?

(I am not sure whether you want this, since you say, continue normally on page 4 as if the two extra pages were not there. Do this mean that these will not increase the page number? If that is the case, my answer is incorrect and I will delete this.)

\documentclass{IEEEtran}

\usepackage{lipsum}

\title{Paper Title}

\author{First Last}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\lipsum[1-5]

\begin{figure*}[!p]
  \centering
  \lipsum[30-35]
  \caption{First full page figure.}
  \label{fig:first}
\end{figure*}

\begin{figure*}[!p]
  \centering
  \lipsum[40-45]
  \caption{Second full page figure.}
  \label{fig:second}
\end{figure*}

\lipsum[21-30]

\lipsum[51-60]

\end{document}