Book cover: Double Fudge Mysteries

Wow, this is an old one! This is one of the first book covers I ever made, way back in 2014. I really liked how it turned out, and I've been itching to show it to you guys! But for some reason it was under NDA for a long, long time, and I forgot about it for a while. But now the book has been published, so I can show it to you.

This is the cover for "Double Fudge Mysteries" from Annie's Fiction. In this cover, the art director asked for the inside of a bakery window, with lots of chocolate treats. A bottle of poison is tucked somewhere behind the desserts. Outside the window, a white persian cat peers at the scene.

"We need to somehow suggest that this takes place in the south," the art director told me over the phone. "Any ideas?"

"I've never actually been to the south," I said.

"Me neither," she said. "What do they have there?"

"Um....alligators?" I suggested.

Eventually I came up with the idea of spanish moss hanging from trees, which has quickly become my go-to solution for any illustration set in the south!

Here are the roughs I sent to the AD.

As a joke, I sent in this rough too:

"Thanks for giving the alligator a try," the AD said, but they decided to go with rough #3, with a change to the cat's pose. But otherwise I was good to go to final.

I had a lot of fun looking at ideas for cute dessert displays on Pinterest! Looking at it now, I think I would have tried to do even more cute things with price tags and patterns on the china and stuff. Again, I drew this three years ago and my style has become more polished and detailed since then.

I spent so much time rendering the frosting on these cupcakes!

Here's the final illustration with the book design:

Now that I see the tagline "someone has a killer sweet tooth," I really wish they would have gone with the alligator idea!