Painting a Safari scene for a nursery (image heavy)

I was invited to a baby shower last month and I knew the nursery has a jungle/safari theme going on. Going off of that information, I worked on a custom painting as my gift.

Size is 2 feet x 1.5 feet. Painted with acrylics.

Blocking out colors and figures

Coming in with some definition to help me mentally picture the plan ahead.

Changed up the position of one of the zebras. I wanted to show more body. Also felt it's important to include some animal parents. It was something my kids noticed when they were babies, where were the parents in the books and paintings?

Here is where my “natural need for expansive color” comes into play. I knew the nursery that this painting is for, has a color pallet of pale pastels, beiges and light evergreen. So I didn't want to create something too bright and bold.

But I also couldn't leave it in realistic tones either. I wrestled back and forth with color choices and stylistic decisions on this piece.

It was at this point that I remembered an old superstition that my mother adhered to. She loved elephants, and collected figurines of them-so long as their trunks where lifting up. She was insistent that elephant art with a downwards facing trunk was bad luck. She had bought a large elephant statue once with a downwards facing trunk, and she promptly got rid of it after she claimed she had a streak of very bad luck. She blamed it solely on the trunk position.

As Bob Ross always said, “there’s no mistakes in Art, just happy accidents.” So I grabbed some white primer and now we have an upward turned trunk for some good luck. Just in case.

It’ll be holding a beach ball to keep with the kid fun theme.

I also added wooden letter blocks to the canvas. My whole goal was to create something that babies can stare at and point at for long periods of time. Patterns, lots of colors, friendly faces and finally, with the wooden blocks I was able to spell out the family last name. Making it personal to them, and something to help the baby with learning the letters of their name.

Here’s the final piece. It had been raining and I didn't get a better pic under good lighting. The “green” highlights on the elephant and rhino should look more yellow than green. It's brighter in person for sure. I changed the zebras eyes to black instead of blue, toned some other colors down a bit so it's not so overwhelming on a newborns eyes.

The giraffe’s face changed a few times, I couldn't decide if I preferred a realistic looking one or a cartoonish looking one. I opted for the friendliest looking face I could make.

I blocked out some of the letters for privacy reasons. They're very happy with it, now we wait to see what the baby thinks when they eventually arrive!