How to Make a Thumbprint Elephant

Place your thumb firmly onto the ink pad to get a good impression.

Your thumbprints don't have to be just for background checks anymore. Rather, create art with them by using your thumbprints as part of the art piece. Use your prints to create different animals, like cats, pigs and even elephants. Your thumbprint creates the head of the elephant, and you get to draw the rest of the details by hand. Have your kids take part in this project and see how many different types of elephants you can create.

Things You'll Need

• Black stamp pad
• Paper
• Black marker or pen
• White-out
• White marker or crayon

Instructions

1. Roll your entire thumb pad on a black stamp pad.

2. Press your thumb onto a piece of paper. Lift off to reveal the base of the elephant.

3. Color in eyes about one-third of the way down the thumbprint. The eyes should be close together in the center of the print.

4. Draw two large elephant ear shapes coming off from the thumbprint. The ears will look roughly like butterfly wings. Color these in with a grey color. Detail the ears by drawing two small lines coming off the edge of the thumbprint, into each ear. The lines need to be going horizontally in line with the eyes. Draw a line on each ear beginning near the top of thumbprint, inside the ear. Parallel the line with the curve of the ear and bring the line about halfway down each ear.

5. Draw out your elephant trunk by beginning it at the bottom of the eyes. Draw a line at about the center of each eye, which will be the outline of the trunk. Bring the two lines down so they parallel each other. Curve the lines past the bottom of the thumbprint and draw the end of the trunk here. Color in the trunk and detail it with several parallel lines running horizontally down the length of the trunk.

6. Make the tusks of the elephant. Draw a curved triangle, just under each eye, flanking the trunk. Make each triangle slightly wider than each of the elephant's eyes. Color these triangles in. Draw a curved triangle coming out of each smaller triangle you just drew. The curved triangles need to go down towards the bottom of the elephant and should look like the tusks of the elephant. Apply white-out to the tusks or color them in with a white color.

References

• 4 Shared: Elephant Smart Box: Thumbprint Elephant
• Mississippi Office of Healthy Schools: REACH Teacher Activity Guide: Activity Materials: Page 9