I've always wanted to draw an alphabet book. I've thought about it for a while, but I've never been able to figure out a theme that would work for me. Monsters where always an early thought, but while I really enjoy the look of monsters, I don't really know much about monster history, or at least not enough to find a monster for each letter of the alphabet. That's the first big problem you get when you're coming up with an alphabet book, figuring out a character or idea for the most obscure letters of the alphabet.
Then one day I was sketching in my sketchbook and a thought crossed my mind, I drew a walrus eating wine gums. The idea suddenly crossed my mind, I love animals and I obviously love candy. While I do care for the wellbeing of animals, my main interest is learning about different kinds of animals, this is why the alphabet concept worked well for me in this case. Candy is also an obsession of mine, and once again it's about the variety of candy that I love.
So after sketching out the walrus eating wine gums, I started to sketch and write out animals and candy for each letter of the alphabet. Fairly quickly I had all the animals and treats sorted out. There were a few challenging letters to deal with, but not as many as I was expecting. The bigger problem I had was trying to find treats for each letter. I didn't want to use brand names in this book, so the challenge was to find non brand names for certain letters of the alphabet. Fortunately I've traveled a fair bit and had treats from many places around the world, so in some cases I used more obscure foreign treats to fill in some of the harder letters of the alphabet.
The next step was to design the book and start the rough drawings.
You can pick up your own copy of Treats and Beast right now on Amazon.