We asked Laurie to sit down and chat to us about her latest picture book Skunk! Skedaddle! and tell us a bit more about her creative process... |
Illustrating Peter Bently’s story, Skunk! Skedaddle! with the team at Andersen Press was a dream job, I am super proud of this book. Let me tell you about my process and experience of working on it.
I love drawing movement. It’s a rewarding challenge to grasp motion in a single image. The author Peter has packed this story with movement, as people are continually ‘skedaddling’ away from poor Sally the skunk.
I love drawing movement. It’s a rewarding challenge to grasp motion in a single image. The author Peter has packed this story with movement, as people are continually ‘skedaddling’ away from poor Sally the skunk.
Before securing this job, I was asked to create some sample artwork, which included designing Sally’s character and an internal page in full colour. I was a keen bean so I gave my best effort and was over the moon when they offered me the job.
I drew Sally’s character a lot, over and over again. Trying to understand her weight, her proportions, particularly her nose/snout and how it would look from different angles. I enjoy getting lost in these kinds of details, this repetitive drawing helps me build an understanding of the character. Once I know what she looks like, it’s easier to pop her into situations & scenes from the story. Here are some of the early sketches of Sally the Skunk:
I love the sketching stage, so I’m going to talk mostly about sketching - inventing the characters, the world and visual-problem solving.
I draw with pencil & A3 printer paper and it gives me a feeling that I can’t put into words. This stage is where I get lost in thought, where I zone out, where I draw things that I didn’t know I could draw. I learn and I think and I create with pencil & paper. With Skunk! Skedaddle! I visually plotted the story into thumbnails and shared these with the publisher. Thumbnails are small-scale rough sketches of each page. Rough sketches come after, which have more detail.
Working small on thumbnails first helps me 'zoom-out' and think about the story as a whole. I try to find a balance and look at how best to break the story down, all the while thinking about the narrative flow of the book. It involves a kind of multitasking-planning. I think being dyslexic helps me grasp lots of things at once, it’s like using my imagination to hold a 3D structure while spinning it around to pick out bits of detail. (Great for illustration but sometimes tricky in other situations!) Here’s an example of a spread in 3 stages, thumbnail, rough & colour artwork:
I draw with pencil & A3 printer paper and it gives me a feeling that I can’t put into words. This stage is where I get lost in thought, where I zone out, where I draw things that I didn’t know I could draw. I learn and I think and I create with pencil & paper. With Skunk! Skedaddle! I visually plotted the story into thumbnails and shared these with the publisher. Thumbnails are small-scale rough sketches of each page. Rough sketches come after, which have more detail.
Working small on thumbnails first helps me 'zoom-out' and think about the story as a whole. I try to find a balance and look at how best to break the story down, all the while thinking about the narrative flow of the book. It involves a kind of multitasking-planning. I think being dyslexic helps me grasp lots of things at once, it’s like using my imagination to hold a 3D structure while spinning it around to pick out bits of detail. (Great for illustration but sometimes tricky in other situations!) Here’s an example of a spread in 3 stages, thumbnail, rough & colour artwork:
Peter’s story is humorous and rhythmic, it has lots of energy. I tried to echo this when planning compositions, using diagonals and swooping areas that flow across the page. It’s another tool for adding movement into a scene. For example, in this busy town scene, I tried to think about everything moving away from Sally. As if she has an invisible star around her that’s making everything bounce away - the skedaddle effect. |
I’d like to talk about the 'Stink scene'. This is where the drama is heightened, Sally behaves like an angry skunk and lets off her stink. She pretty much explodes as she kicks ass and we also see the thief Nobby the Job get his comeuppance...
I had a lot of fun drawing this spread. It came with a healthy amount of challenges. Up till this point the world is relatively ‘real’, but here the mood changes with an abstract background. I went with zappy zig zags and bold colours. It can be tricky balancing lots of bold colours on one page, I kept re-colouring and re-colouring and tweaking until it looked right. I wanted to contort Nobby’s body & expression, and it was a challenge to make it look believable.
When colouring my artwork, I work entirely digitally. None of the pencil sketches are visible in the final result. Still, I rely on the sketches hugely because I trace around them on the computer. In Skunk! Skedaddle! I used a large amount of colour. The world has a lot of detail and different scenes (woodland, bus stops, city buildings, a zoo etc) so I didn't want to be restricted by a colour palette. To make Nobby stand out so I went with a blue while the rest of the page is filled with oranges, pinks and warm colours. As Sally was naturally black and white, she stood out easily in the busy scenes.
When working on the final art, I check that the book sits together as a whole by laying the colour pages next to each other in one document, as you can see here, below. I love collecting the pages as the book slowly becomes complete!
When colouring my artwork, I work entirely digitally. None of the pencil sketches are visible in the final result. Still, I rely on the sketches hugely because I trace around them on the computer. In Skunk! Skedaddle! I used a large amount of colour. The world has a lot of detail and different scenes (woodland, bus stops, city buildings, a zoo etc) so I didn't want to be restricted by a colour palette. To make Nobby stand out so I went with a blue while the rest of the page is filled with oranges, pinks and warm colours. As Sally was naturally black and white, she stood out easily in the busy scenes.
When working on the final art, I check that the book sits together as a whole by laying the colour pages next to each other in one document, as you can see here, below. I love collecting the pages as the book slowly becomes complete!
This is a book that really comes to life when read aloud, I urge you to please find a copy and read it with a child and then re-read it spotting Nobby along the way!
Skunk! Skedaddle! Written by Peter Bently. Illustrated by Laurie Stansfield. Published by Andersen Press (£12.99)
Skunk! Skedaddle! Written by Peter Bently. Illustrated by Laurie Stansfield. Published by Andersen Press (£12.99)