Ok, I went through it with my roommate. He says that the characters are "simplified Chinese", which means that the picture was done in modern times, and most likely on the mainland. (Taiwan uses "traditional Chinese", in which the characters are, umm, well, more traditional. More strokes to them, and done with more style.) I no longer feel so bad about not being able to find more than two of them in my beginner's dictionary.
He also says that since the words themselves don't make sense, the characters were probably chosen for their prettiness, and that the sounds are merely close to other words -- perhaps a line of poetry or something like that. This is common in Chinese dialects, sort of like punning, or analogous to "eye rhyme" in English-language poetry.
The words in red, from top, are "cow elephant rooster", and in white, "lucky unicorn dragon sparrow Liu" ("Liu2" being a family surname).
The character on the lower left is "qian3", meaning "shallow" or "light".