Inspirations behind the illustration- Chipmunks

It is easy to look at a piece of art and forget that there could be a story behind why it came to be.

Take this illustration for example. We all see a cute chipmunk sitting on a rock by a lake with a mountain in the the distance and think, this is super cute!
As the artist, it has a deeper meaning to me… I recreated a memory from a road trip I took with my partner in 2019.

This illustration is a representation of a real place called Frog lake in Oregon and the mountain in the background is Mt Hood. I had seen it in early 2019 from a YouTube-er called Travelbum who has a travel vlog. Without knowing why, I just knew I had to go there.
I’m so glad I did it! It was such an amazingly beautiful place and I took many photographs while there, but one of my most fond memories of that visit was the chipmunks.

There was a small rock slide my partner and I decided to climb. We sat in amusement on a huge boulder, while we watched the chipmunks scurry back and forth. I tried in vane to get some snapshots but they were just too quick and too unpredictable XD

When I decided to illustrate a chipmunk for my coloring book I knew I wanted to take some inspirations from this memory which has been held dear to my heart.