As I was cleaning up my digital files, I noticed that some of Squirrel’s adventures from 2023 haven’t made it to the blog yet, so I thought it’s about time I caught you up. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have seen some of these before but there is one new one!
All images are hosted on Flickr – click through for a larger view, and for image descriptions (Alt Text equivalent).
First up: not Squirrel, but Mouse. She’s checking out the cheese section of somebody’s well-stocked pantry library.
Next up: Squirrel and Fox did all the tourist things in DC – in addition to and a drawing I posted earlier, there is this snapshot:
Squirrel enjoying some quiet time, while I experimented with Procreate:
New one! Like many mammals, food is an enormous source of motivation for squirrels. It will even make them do math and physics. How will this end?!?
Things I learned from a year of drawing squirrels and other animals:
- I still need to work on a consistent style for my squirrel, if I want to present him as a single character. It’s ok to switch between a more anthropomorphic and a more realistic/animal representation, but they’re not the same squirrel throughout.
- Some squirrels look more like a kangaroo 🤔 I need to work on the face.
- Finding the balance between enough detail and sufficient simplification is really hard. Cartooning is a real skill and takes a lot of practice to develop.
- I’m loath to give in to the trend of 3 fingers + 1 thumb for cartoon characters, but drawings get crowded with 4+1.
- Squirrels are fun to draw, but so are mice and foxes!
Would you like to see more cartoon-style drawings of Squirrel and friends? Let me know in the comments!
