Audubon Inspired Drawings and Watercolor Prints

John James Audubon (1785-1851) was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America (Alexander Wilson has that distinction), but for half a century he was the young country’s dominant wildlife artist. With nothing but a gun, artist’s materials and a young assistant, Audubon set off on his epic quest to depict America’s avifauna, living a rugged existence as he floated down the Mississippi in the early 1820’s. His life-size, highly dramatic bird portraits, along with his embellished descriptions of wilderness life, hit just the right note at the height of the Continent’s Romantic era. His seminal "Birds of America," a collection of 435 life-size prints, quickly eclipsed Wilson’s work and is still a standard against which 20th and 21st century bird artists are measured. Although he had no role in the organization that bears his name, today, the name Audubon remains synonymous with birds and bird conservation the world over.

In this project, 8th graders used Audubon’s Birds of America, North American bird field guides and other reference books and magazines to first create an accurately rendered pencil drawing of a bird of their choice. Then they created a watercolor print based on their drawing. To create a watercolor print, students first put a piece of plexiglass on top of their drawing and used liquid watercolors to create a deatiled watercolor painting on the plexi (they could see the outline of their drawing through the glass). With the painting complete, high quality cotton printing paper was then soaked in water for half the class, and then pressed between dry papers. The damp paper was placed on top of the plexi and covered in newsprint and felt, before being run through the printing press three times. The paper is peeled from the plexi, leaving the colorful print!