It started out as a sketch of a rat sitting down, then it escalated...

At first my idea was to draw the rat sitting on a pier, but I felt like the sitting position was more suited for an uneven surface, so I went with a tree branch.
Also, I first thought about using soft coloring and a sunrise type of light, but as I was looking at references, I got more inspired by Finnish summer sunsets and especially the golden hour~

I'm quite satisfied with this. I feel like I still need to practice e.g. drawing water and especially ripples, but I think they look decent here ^^

Also, the original work is much bigger, but I cropped it to bring out the character more. So yeah, I basically drew a looot of unused stuff ^^; I might upload the full image later

Character and art by me
Thanks to my friend who gave me feedback!