Zeichnung zur Fibel_ Eichhorn c. 1905

Hans Thoma made this drawing of a squirrel for a children's book, but that doesn’t stop it from being art, of course. Imagine him hunched over a piece of paper, using delicate lines to build up the image. Thoma's squirrel is carefully observed, but there’s a lot of imagination at play here. Look at the way he’s used cross-hatching to create different textures, from the squirrel's bushy tail to the gnarly oak leaves. You can almost feel the squirrel's fur and the rough bark of the tree. I wonder what Thoma was thinking about when he drew this? Maybe he was remembering his own childhood, or just enjoying the simple pleasure of drawing a cute animal. It’s a reminder that art doesn’t always have to be serious or profound – sometimes it can just be a celebration of the world around us. This drawing has the magic of a child's world—a world that artists are constantly trying to get back to, and show us in new ways.