Chipmunks are cute, inquisitive, and easily tamed. From spring to fall and from dawn to dusk, the chipmunk scampers about gathering nuts, grains, and seeds. It varies its diet by also eating fruit, insects and bird eggs. When spotted by a hawk, fox, or cat, the chipmunk pops into its burrow, but predators such as snakes or badgers can invade the burrow.
In winter, the chipmunk sleeps curled up in its cozy den on a bed of leaves, getting up occasionally to feast on provisions stored in various room of its burrow. In spring, the female produces a litter of five babies that mature by summer to begin tunneling their own burrows.
You will need:
- Sketch paper
- Bristol paper
- Ruler
- Prismacolors or watercolors
HINT: For this project, you can use either watercolors, colored pencils, or both. I like to apply basic colors with watercolors and then switch to sharp Prismacolors for detail.
- On sketch paper, let’s determine proportions with a 5½” x 6½” rectangle divided with diagonal, horizontal, and vertical lines. Then sketch in the basic shape and add details.
Trace your sketch onto Bristol paper. Put in black markings; then add light gray as a base coat on the head, tail, and body. - Paint the tree stump yellow ocher. Use a reddish orange, such as burnt sienna, on the leaves. Color the grass green and the acorn caps with yellow ocher in the centers. Shade with darker brown.
Paint the fence post gray. - Go over the chipmunk with touches of yellow ocher. Layer on burnt sienna, and shade with dark brown.
On the leaves, put in veins and shading with heavier applications of burnt sienna.
Pencil in tree rings. Shade the base of the grass clumps with blue; then go over the entire clump with yellow.
Scribble on dark brown tree bark with choppy strokes.
