A grey squirrel approaches the bird feeders but I rattle open the patio doors and send him away. The problem is that our bird feeders aren’t squirrel-proof and we’ve had the plastic perches and seed-hoppers nibbled away in the past. Time to grease the pole, I’m afraid. I don’t like doing it but I’ve yet to come up with a better solution.
The leaping squirrel is another rough from my children’s picture book Deep in the Wood. I was trying to see the world from a squirrel’s point of view. What would it be like to be up there leaping with the squirrel?
You can see where I’ve had to adjust the head, sticking on a new version. The darker lines on both these drawings show where they were traced down onto watercolour paper for the final artwork. The squirrel with the nut was an early version of the cover. We didn’t use it because it looked as if the book was just about squirrels. A new version of the cover featured all the animals that appear in the book.