A Little Lamb and a Lesson in Animal Ages

Every Sunday, I have the great blessing of teaching a class of five- and six-year-olds at my church. Today, our lesson was about how Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd, so I decided to draw a picture of a cute little lamb for the kids to take home with them to help them remember what they learned at church today. I sure love those cute little lambs I get to teach every week!

Lesson Learned: When drawing baby animals, be aware of proportions. Make sure you have accurate reference of the baby animal or your illustration may end up looking more like a miniature animal than a baby animal.  Just like human babies, baby animals have a very different head-to-body size ratio. To keep your baby animal characters looking young, make the head bigger, eyes and ears larger and torso shorter than those of a grown animal. For sheep and other hoofed animals, make the legs skinnier and the coat shorter and softer looking than that of its adult counterpart. Add sweetness to your character by emphasizing eyelashes and hinting at a smile in the character's expression.