“The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang the best.”
-John James Audubon
John James Audubon was born in Haiti in 1785. His father was a French sea captain and plantation owner. At a very young age he was interested in birds and nature.
When he was 18, Audubon was sent to a family owned estate near Philadelphia. He became a businessman – setting up a dry goods store in frontier Kentucky and continued to draw birds as a hobby. After hard times hit Audubon set off and an epic quest to discover America’s birds. He lived a rugged existence, but the finished work brought him immediate success and a modest degree of comfort. He settled in New York City.
He is most known for his major work The Birds of America which is unsurpassed as one of the greatest ornithological works ever completed. In this book he documented all types of American birds in their natural habitat with exquisite detailed illustrations. He produced a prolific body of work that included over 435 paintings of birds.
The students in our class learned how to create a multi-coloured watercolour background with liquid watercolours. Lastly they painted the cliff and eagle silhouettes.