Audubon Bird Project

Bird Print Portraits

4 part project, life study drawings to finished prints.
Part I: drawing from life introduce Audubon (brief history connects to 5th grade standards). Using bird prints and coloring book drawings, students create a series of bird portrait sketches
Part II: artists refine their sketches and introduce the printing process
Part III: one drawing is selected and transferred to the printing plate-model process and allow for practice with materials
Part IV: Printing Day-set up large tables and work in small groups.

John James Audobon

http://www.audubon.org/john-james-audubon

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. 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, such as Roger Tory Peterson and David Sibley, are measured