I will admit upfront that I was inspired by some original work in Restoration Hardware recently that this post gets its creative juice from. I am planning on giving the giraffe to my friend Lauren's baby Pierce and the elephant to a colleague who recently had a baby boy! If anyone is interested in purchasing, please send a request to kimtraut@yahoo.com and we can pick animals together. :)

Here I am with baby P and his favorite giraffe last summer. Time flies, he is running around riding lawnmowers now!

My watercolor supplies are basic for this project. I love Arches paper for projects like this.

I sketched the animals using some photos of the RH work as a guide. You could also use coloring book pages for inspiration.

After practicing, I drew the giraffe on the watercolor paper in pencil.

I painted the giraffe with watercolor paints and shaded in the spots.

Last step was to add some defining lines in pen and sign off!

The elephant was the same process - sketch, paint and define with pen.

Layers of watercolor shade the drawn shapes

Pen is applied last so it does not run underneath the watercolor.

This was such a fun project. I can't wait to see these framed!