The Beaver

One of the characters I came up with for the Moose project was The Beaver.

In the story, the moose comes across a beaver, who ends up being of no help to the moose as he tries to find friends along his journey.

Never having drawn a beaver before (I don't know why), I looked them up and came up with these sketches:

I ended up refining his head to look like this:

So this was the final sketch for the page:

 

Here is the beaver in color:

Here is the facing page, where the beaver goes about his business, 

since the moose is no use to him.

I found that when designing and drawing a character, the slightest nuance or gesture matter; an arched eyebrow, a sidelong glance or a tilt of the head can dramatically affect the character's expression and role in a story. Here, the beaver cares more about his business than about the moose as they go off in different directions. 

The sticks were fun to paint! The beaver was really my favorite character, although the bug-eyed bird was a close second (see last post about The Moose Project).