Audubon and The Birds of America- Podcast #51
John James Audubon had a passion for birds and he loved exploring America and discovering the many unique species of the land.
This podcast correlates to one of our lesson plans: Audubon’s Scientific Illustrations with Upside-Down Drawing- Lesson Plan. It’s available on its own or as part of our Science Meets Art Drawing Package.
John James Audubon
Audubon was a famous explorer, scientist, and artist. He’s known for his scientific illustrations of birds, which were published in a book named, The Birds of America.
I was wrong about it when recording the podcast, but have since learned that there are 13 copies of the original hand-colored book still in existence! In June of 2018, a copy sold for $9.65 million!
You can find some of Audubon’s Original watercolor paintings at the New York Historical Society.
Things We Mention
- Tracing is Amazing– tracing is a great replacement if you don’t want to do Upside Down Drawing. Here you’ll find all our tracing recommendations and resources in one place.
- Grid Drawing (squaring up) is a great alternative as well!
- Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year from England on the YouTube channel, Art Lover.
- Podcast #42: How to Improve your Skills with Drawing Drills– In this episode and blog post we lay out a series of drawing drills you can easily incorporate into your day to improve your drawing skills.
- Podcast #30: Archaic Greek Art, Linking Ancient to Modern Art– In this episode and blog post, we mostly focused on Art History but also mentioned the Upside Down Drawing Drill.
- Classical Conversations (CC) communities use this drill every year on week 3 so we have several other lesson plans that use the Upside-Down Drawing Drill:
- Drawing Upside Down Ships (CC, Cycle 3 on American History)
- Drawing Archaic Greek Gods Upside Down (CC, Cycle 1 on Ancient History)
Personal Renaissance: I’ve finished updating our Baroque – Impressionist art lesson plans with the Van Gogh lesson plan added!
