So it seems that I am at an age where a lot of my friends and family are expanding their families.  It is pretty amazing to see how much love goes into having and raising a child, and since I do not have any little ones of my own yet, I try to put my efforts into helping the parents create a welcoming space for their new arrivals.  My latest project has been very fun to work on since the parents picked an elephant theme.  I came up with the concept of elephants spelling out the letters of their soon to be daughter a couple months ago and it took a while to execute and put the elephants on canvas.

The letters were a “surprise” for the mom so under covert operations I was able to learn of the rooms colors and theme.  I was also given a fabric sample of some of the bedding so I tried to keep the style of the elephant in the same spirit.

Luckily, the dad “stole” a can of the paint for my reference.  I usually like to mix my own paints to match colors, but for this pale pink, it was very difficult and I ended up using the paint given to me to cover the canvases as the base.

Not knowing how the wall paint would do on the canvases, I was optimistic and waited a few days before starting to sketch.  Luckily the paint covered well and I only had to do one good coat.  Maybe in the future I can use more wall paint for the base instead of using a ton of acrylic to do the background colors for other projects.  After some toiling and last-minute changes to my ‘concept’ elephants, I sketched them onto the blocks and then gave myself more time to really ponder the overall execution of the letters.

  

I am fairly happy with the way they came out.  Here are some closer shots of each individual letter.  Needless-to-say, the mom was happily surprised and now the nursery is awaiting the arrival of Madelyn.  Hope she has fun looking at the letters every day as I had fun creating them.