Making of “Tulip”
A Behind the Scenes look at Illustrating the story of a rescue beaver
It was love at first sight with this project, I had to do it. I mean, look at that smile!
Tulip’s story is rather unique, and it features a heroine, Dr. Holley Muraco, a marine biologist who helps rehabilitate orphaned baby beavers in her spare time. Yes she’s living every 90’s girl’s dream, or maybe it was just me. Anyway, Tulip turned out to have a persistent skin infection that only healed with the creative use of onesies.
Capturing the essence of Tulip wasn’t hard, but it was surprisingly challenging to make the art as cute as the real beaver!
In the creek beside our property, we had a huge beaver lodge a couple years ago, occupied by what seemed to be a 3 generation dynasty of beavers. Unfortunately their dam caused our roads to flood, so the township had to dredge the dam and demolish the lodge. I do not know if any of the beavers were hurt, but I could not stop thinking about them while working on this book.
We still see the beavers around, they’ve since built three new dams on the same creek, so the beaver legacy lives on in my neighbourhood.
The relationship between humans and wildlife is always nuanced and complex; Tulip’s home was probably destroyed by land development, but her life was saved by construction workers and the kindness of other humans.
If you’d like to support the rescue work of Dr. Holley Muraco, you can purchase a copy of this book at this link: https://rescue-beavers.myshopify.com
Or donate directly to http://www.somethingwild.org
But I think you should get the book 😉