“Squirrel’s Gift” - a Story in 4 pictures

🎁 Happy Holidays! 🎁 

Here's my Holiday greeting to you.

THE STORY BEHIND THE ART

I created the pen-and-ink artwork for this card in the 1980’s. The model was a little ground squirrel that my partner and I met on a hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon who had mastered the art of begging treats from tourists. I took a number of photos of it and later used those photos to create the design of the squirrel receiving a gift from a bird. 

That was before the days of personal computers and inkjet printers. Color printing was expensive, so I created many pen-and-ink designs for cards and stationery for myself, designed to be xeroxed on card stock and hand-colored.

Since I intended to send out a number of Christmas cards, I planned this card design so that only the red ribbon needed to be colored, creating a pleasing Holiday card without spending hours and hours hand-coloring every card in full color.

The cards were hand-folded in an accordion fold so the recipient would see each panel in the story as they opened the card.

🎨 "Poppy Red" Prismacolor pencil on xeroxed pen-and-ink artwork.