Hotel Escarabajo

Process of my first book as an author-illustrator

Mar 13, 2025

Hi! I’m over the moon! My first book as an author-illustrator is alive! And the edition is exquisite!

I want to share with you some images of the process, the first sketches made a long time ago, and some other stories about this slow but nice process.

This story has taken a long time to come to light, I've been working on it since 2019. The illustrations were selected for the Illustrators Exhibition at the Bologna Children's Book Fair 2022.

The Very First Steps

I started writing this book in 2019. I was at a small café in the heart of Barcelona, sitting on a long table with this new sketchbook and a pencil.

Cafés have always seemed to me, to be good places to think of new ideas, despite the noise and the distractions. I started designing the elements of the book, there wasn’t any text yet, so I wanted to approach the idea first from the scenery and the atmosphere.

In the beginning, I made a wise moth, I still love this character design. She has this air of Madame Adelaide Bonfamille from The Aristocats.

She was like a very refined character, which I still think is a nice idea but in the end, I twisted it and now the moth is a lovely lady fascinated by the night sky and the stars, a romantic and clever character.

Then came Mr.Beetle, the hotel owner. It was first very roundy based on the shapes of a real beetle larva and then I thought of a more angular (sharpy) design as I wanted him to be rude, elegant, arrogant, and distant.

Technique: pencil and watercolor. The final designs look like they have nothing to do with the first characters hehe.

As this was a personal project, I had to take other jobs to pay the bills and I worked on it at the end of the day or when I had some spare time. I’m not sure I’ll do something like this again (maybe I will) I wrote and illustrated the whole story before sending it to publishers!

The original arts

Most of the book was made on DIN A4 and DIN A3 and mixed with media: gouache, colored pencils, and wax pastels.

Some of them are BIG because why not?

Sketches and notes, some bugs are super real and others are super invented by me.

These are photos of the process of the cover.

The Bologna Children’s Book Fair

This was my first time in Bologna this series got selected for the Illustrators Exhibition of 2022. As you can see it was kinda a post-pandemic time but I was so happy to be there.

In 2023 the lovely community of dPICTUS selected the book for The Unpublished Picturebook Showcase. For various reasons, that year I was sick and tired yet I met great artists, illustrators, and publishers, and that time at the fair was one of the best times I’ve had!

Here I am with what I called THE VERY FIRST EDITION of the Bug Hotel (now Beetle Hotel)

I looked everywhere for a nice publisher, and some of them replied with comments about what worked for them and what didn’t. I got all kinds of feedback I learned to listen and I also learned to not. You can drive crazy if you follow everyone’s advice and opinions.

The project was acquired in 2024 by the amazing Blackie Books, It was like a dream! I have a lot of books edited by them and loved their way of making things, the cover, the paper, the editions before my story was on their radar.

I have to say it was a great pleasure to work with them, I’m very grateful for the work they did and very very happy with the result!!