Vintage two-color tree squirrel drawing. This large image is from a children’s book published in 1881. It was a charming book about The Old Oak Tree and included stories of all of the creatures who lived in and around the tree, including this squirrel and the rabbits pictured at the base of the tree. The book did not identify an illustrator.
This squirrel image looks to me like it is an engraving, rather than a hand-colored image like a number of the other book plates I found in this book. I edited the image from the original. It was originally printed in orange-brown ink but the paper had so much discoloration from age that it seemed better to make it black and white. That way, with a bit of photo editing, you could make the lines any color you want.
In this drawing we have a large squirrel sitting on the top of the tree. He seems almost larger than the tree and even looks a bit like he was drawn separately from the oak tree. It would seem to be a fairly easy task to isolate the squirrel from the rest of the drawing if that would make it more useful for you.
The drawing includes a small sketch of a house off in the distance. But, it is the three young rabbits at the base of the tree that really up the cuteness factor of this vintage public domain squirrel drawing.
The size and shape of this drawing make it perfect to use for custom stationery or a base image for a scrapbook page. I hope you find it as charming as I do.
The drawing on this page has been made slightly smaller to fit my site’s layout and to conserve a bit of bandwidth. If you want to use this image, just click on the image and you will be shown the full-sized version of this vintage squirrel drawing.
This image is copyright free and in the public domain anywhere that extends copyrights 70 years after death or at least 120 years after publication when the original illustrator is unknown.
