Erin O'Toole

Seeing the Story

 
My first encounter with this family of skunks was with a dead one. I couldn't figure out what would want to kill a skunk. Turns out owls eat skunks, they can't smell.  Sometimes young foxes will try to eat a skunk.

Soon I saw the rest of the family alive and well. They were living under a large oak tree. I began roughing out the story with rough sketches as I read up on  skunks.

Once I was happy with the flow of the story. I choose a few of the drawings to paint on Arches 300 pound watercolor paper with watercolor. Not all the pages come together so quickly, some I futz with way too much. Eventually the story of the skunk family made it into book form.

Black and White

Charcoal and white conte on Canson paper.

Drawing in black and white is a rest. Concentrating on the light I can let the paper carry the mid-tones.

These squirrels knew I was in a black and white mood. I had just decided to do some ink drawing and looked up to see them posing in the tree that broke in this year's wind. This is the same tree that the baby owls lived in last spring.

I started with Pigma pen, then added some darks with my brush pen and smeared things with a bit of water.

Three Tips

• Watercolor washes in journals or any thin paper tend to buckle. I work around this problem by placing the journal under a stack of books for several hours. Keep an eye on the painted parts of the page, when the sheen is gone it is time to press.

• When you are finishing sketches in your journals, work from the most recent pages back to earlier ones.

• Sharpen your pencils with a knife and sandpaper. Take the wood back about three quarters of an inch with the knife, then sharpen the lead with sandpaper. Sharpen several at once. Keep the beveled edge sharp by not turning the pencil too much as you draw.