Watercolor Baby Animals

I wanted to share with you these cute little Watercolor Baby Animals today. I have a lot to learn about painting animals in watercolor, but the process is so much fun!

I’m trying to remember the very first animal I painted. It must’ve been in 1999 or 2000 or thereabouts.

It wasn’t the very first animal, but I distinctly remember when I attempted a lion. My ‘studio’ at the time was an open space set off the kitchen so the kids and Marlon would walk from the living or bedrooms into the kitchen and could see what I was up to.

This poor king of the jungle. I had no idea how to paint fur so I was painting teeny tiny hairs on his face, then I’d stand back and ‘ugh’ and white out his face to try again. After a number of attempts, my son interrupted his snack mission to tell me, “It looked fine before. Why do you keep ‘erasing’ his face?”

To which I had no reply. Just a shoulder shrug. And the realization that maybe, just maybe, I was a tad bit anal retentive.

I have no idea what happened to that lion and I have no photo of him, but I’ll always remember him and the OCDish revelation that came with.

I began painting animal murals soon after. Always with a good dose of trepidation. These were done with simple ol’ craft acrylics that I tried to hide from my clients because I thought the cheapo colors made me look unprofessional.

They didn’t care a whit about what I used because sooner, or later, I’d come up with a good-looking painting on their wall.

The largest mural I ever did was a 4 wall Safari Nursery in soft, muted tones full of jungle animals. It nearly broke my heart when the clients left our area to move to Los Angeles. I knew that mural would be painted over tout suite.

Not long after I painted the lion, along with a tiger and zebra, I attempted a doggy painting of our furbabies.

This brings such good memories of Bully and L’il Mo. I always wonder if the pet portraits I paint for people make them as happy as this one does me.

I hope so.

Now that I’m almost exclusively painting with watercolors, I’ll be doing more watercolor baby animals. I have a pet portrait order for Christmas to do but, at this time, I’ll stick with my tried and true craft acrylics.