Elephants Wall Art

Elephants Wall Art

The question almost everyone asks first is whether an elephant will read as a nursery picture. It is a fair thing to ask, because the subject genuinely spans both worlds, and the answer has nothing to do with the animal and everything to do with the treatment. Rounded shapes, pastel washes and a friendly eye belong in a child's room. A close photographic study of cracked hide, or a dark silhouette against dust and low sun, belongs anywhere in the house.

Skin is what separates the strong images. An elephant's hide is deeply fissured, dust-caked and mapped with veins across the ears, and a good print keeps all of that texture legible from close range. Smooth grey renderings lose the animal's age, which is most of what makes the subject worth looking at in the first place.

Format follows composition more than usual here. A herd crossing open ground is emphatically a wide image and needs a long wall. A single animal facing the camera is nearly symmetrical and close to square, which makes it one of the few wildlife subjects that works on a chimney breast or in the narrow panel between two doorways.

Colour is the easy part. Grey-brown hide will not argue with any scheme you already own, so the temperature of the piece comes from whatever sits behind the animal — gold dust, green thorn scrub, flat white sky, or the blue of deep shade. Choose that background to suit the room, not the animal.

If it really is going in a child's room, hang it lower than adult eye level so it is visible from a bed rather than admired by visitors, and fix it properly to the wall rather than propping it anywhere near a cot. In an adult room, do the opposite: hang it high enough that the animal's eye meets yours as you come through the door.