How to Draw Life-Size Jungle Animals

Life-size jungle animals are wonderful additions to a mural or display. You can draw elephants and giraffes on a nursery wall or paint lions and tigers on a rec room. There are many exciting jungle animals and they look striking when they're life-size. Drawing anything life-size is easy if you use a projector to increase the size of your image.

Things You'll Need

• Posterboard
• Pencil
• Paper
• Ruler
• Projector
• Dropcloth
• Paintbrushes
• Acrylic paint

Instructions

1. Decide where you're going to put your jungle animals. If you are putting them on a wall, clear everything away from the wall and study where you want your animals to go. Think about the space you have available. A giraffe's head might reach over a doorway. A snake might stretch along the baseboard.

2. 

   Once you have a basic idea, get out a piece of paper. Use a ruler to draw a rectangle in the proportions of your wall. Sketch out the animals you want to use on your wall, looking at photos for examples. If you want, you can even use a photo directly by projecting it onto the wall.

3. Wipe down the wall and make sure it's clean and free of dust and dirt.

4. Get out your projector. There are old-fashioned projectors that plug into the wall, and modern projectors that plug into your laptop. If you use a laptop projector, you will need to upload your drawing onto your computer. You could do this with a scanner or by uploading a digital photo of your sketch. Project your drawing onto the wall and adjust your projector until it is the size and position you want.

5. Carefully trace over the outline of the drawing, using a pencil. Keep your pencil lines light so you won't see them when you paint over them. You don't need to fill in shading, but you may choose to lightly mark areas where you will add shading.

6. Put a dropcloth on the floor. Studying your sketch or original photos, paint in the colors of your lion. When you mix colors, be sure to mix plenty of paint---if you run out halfway through the body, it will be obvious. Add small amounts of black to your base color to paint the areas in shadow. If you make a mistake, simply wait until the paint dries and paint over it.

7. Paint any grass or background you wish. Wait until the paint is thoroughly dry before you pick up the dropcloth and move furniture back. (Acrylic paint dries fairly quickly.)

Tips & Warnings

• If you don't have a projector, draw a small grid over your lion. Draw a bigger grid on the wall, at the size you want the lion to be. Use the two grids to help you recreate your small lion as a big lion.