Audubon, John James - John James Audubon (essay date 1838?)
John James Audubon (essay date 1838?)
SOURCE: "My Style of Drawing Birds," in Audubon and His Journals, by Maria R. Audubon, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897, pp. 522-27.
[In the following essay, originally published at the time The Birds of America appeared, Audubon explains his techniques for making his bird paintings appear lifelike.]
When, as a little lad, I first began my attempts at representing birds on paper, I was far from possessing much knowledge of their nature, and, like hundreds of others, when I had laid the effort aside, I was under the impression that it was a finished picture of a bird because it possessed some sort of a head and tail, and two sticks in lieu of legs; I never troubled myself with the thought that abutments were requisite to prevent it from falling either backward or forward, and oh! what bills and claws I did draw, to say nothing of a perfectly straight line for a back, and a tail stuck in anyhow,...
[The entire page is 1995 words long]
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