One of my dearest friends’ daughter is having a baby.  Funny, we both had two tall and long-legged daughters (and beautiful!) and neither one of us is very tall… yes, both their dads are tall.  Both our girls happen to love giraffes.  I’m thinking it has something to do with everyone commenting on their height. 🙂  And well, they just like giraffes and so do I.  So when I decided to paint a picture for her nursery, I decided on giraffes.  After many years of photographing mom’s and babies (see previous post) I thought a mom and baby giraffe snuggling would be just perfect!

Here is the sketch for the painting:

Sketch of mom and baby giraffe.

I love giraffes.  They are such a cool looking animal.  I have lots of photographs of giraffes from the zoo’s and wild animal parks that we have visited over the years.   I would love to visit the Giraffe Manor in Nairobi, Kenya.  I ran across their website when I was looking at zebra’s and giraffe’s online.  Although waking up to a giraffe licking you would be pretty wild.

I just started working on the painting.  I am not surprised that mother’s and babies have appeared as subject matter in my paintings.  I seem to just love this relationship, whether it is animal or human.  I painted a vibrant green background and I have just blocked in the giraffes.  Funny, I didn’t realize the back of a giraffe’s ear is white.  Hmmm… you learn all kinds of things once you start studying the details and the breakdown of shapes and color.  Here is my progress so far:

Progress so far on giraffe painting

I will post the finished painting soon, which I hope will be this next week.  My daughter comes home from college next weekend, so I am painting everyday this week to get lots done as I know I will want to goof off with her once she gets home.  I have already started a list of fun things for us to do together… like pedicures, visiting art museums and “doing nothing”.  I actually wrote that on the list… as well as “go to the beach and do nothing.”  Well maybe we will walk up to the ice cream shop.  I can’t wait!

Have a wonderful creative day, Janell