Painting birds with style

“Never give up listening to the sounds of the birds…”

John James Audubon

European explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries, documented all manner of flora and fauna. The bird life was often the most spectacular. However, the painted images all had specific style, largely because all were rigid cadavers when drawn. The standard approach was for shooting parties to bring bags of new bird species to artists, who rarely had the chance to see them whilst alive. In the early 1800s, John Audubon travelled all across North America. He was determined to both see and paint as many species of bird as possible. His now iconic style, was to capture the natural postures of the birds and include aspects of their habitat. His 1834 book, Birds of America, contains 435 images. Remarkably, his insisted all the birds were printed as life-size. This made a book with enormous pages and sometimes inventive bird posing, as we can see with this Pink Flamingo. 150 copies were produced and if you have one it is worth $8 million. #somethingtoaspireto #letsmakelemonade