Some of our favorite picture books are the Brambly Hedge series by British author and illustrator Jill Barklem.  The illustrations in these books are as sweet as any I’ve ever seen.  Every page is full of cute little woodland critters donning 19th century attire and going about their lives in quaint rural fashion.  

The books themselves are only 7″ x 5″ so the illustrations are small, but they are packed with rich colors and exquisite detail.  The stories are delightful, too,  but I would buy them for the pictures alone. 

We currently have the one titled “Autumn Story” displayed on one of our bookshelves, along with other autumn themed books. 

For drawing practice this week we decided to draw some Brambly Hedge mice gathering berries for their winter provisions, similar to this illustration-

 It didn’t take long to realize that the mice were harder to draw than we thought. To solve this problem, I  created a black line drawing of one of the mice and a few surrounding branches.  My young artist could then add more branches, autumn leaves, and lots and lots of bright red berries. 

You may have seen in my post before last that the art teacher had fun sketching, too!

Feel free to print out the outline drawing if your young artist would like to give it a try!

Happy Tuesday!