Making Treats and Beasts - The Inks Turn Into A Book

As I mentioned before, I really had no direct plan to turn this collection of drawings into a book. In fact I wasn't even sure that I would finish all of the drawings. I figured I might loose interest at some point and just move onto something else. The thing is, I didn't. I really wanted to try and finish each and every drawing in the collection, and near the last few drawings I realized that I think it would make a really fun collection, maybe in a book format.

After deciding this, my next phase was to figure out how the book should look. I decided that I would use a few electronic fonts, however I wanted the letter that was showcased to be my own design. Since I had designed the animals and snacks using a rough circle template, I figured the letters should also fit into this template. I found lots of reference online and starting sketching out some font ideas. Eventually I had each letter drawn and inked.

The other choice I made once I decided to make a book was that I wanted the illustrations to be in colour. I don't own a scanner and I didn't want to buy one for this project. I still wasn't convinced it would actually pan out. Since I am a photographer, I decided that I would photograph each drawing. This turned out to be fairly challenging, particularly getting the light just right. I built a setup and had to shoot each and every drawing on the same day. I wanted to make sure they all matched perfectly.

After that I brough everything into various Adobe editing tools and after a few drawings were done I had a system that worked fairly well. The good thing about taking the photos of the art was the fact that many of the sketchy lines and even the texture of the paper came through just a little bit. I feel it gave the art a really nice natural feeling.

The colouring was probably the hardest part of the process for me. I'm not a great expert on colours, and I found parts of this process to be very hard on the eyes. I do however feel that it worked out fairly well and I'm glad I went beyond black and white.

Next the cover idea.

Make sure to get your very own copy of Treats and Beast right now on Amazon.

CC