2nd and 3rd-graders at Bloomfield Elementary learned all about how Audubon looked at birds: up-close and personal, painting them with so much detail it was hard to tells his paintings apart from the real thing! After looking at photographs of real birds we see in Maine during the winter, students drew their own with colored pencil. They then made warm or cool-colored backgrounds using watercolor, expertly cut their birds out, glued them down, and added the finishing touch that no bird in Maine in the winter should be without: snow!

Did you know…?

• John James Audubon was born in 1785. He moved all around the world as a child, but spent a lot of time in the US – in Pennsylvania, in particular.
• He loved wildlife, and drew it throughout his life
• He was one of the first people to watch birds very closely – he tied a ribbon around several birds at is house, and discovered that they came back to their nest every year.
• He – like most of the artists we have studied – was very poor. But he loved to draw birds, and spend most of his life traveling around the US in boats, on foot, on horseback, drawing birds. He liked to draw them life-sized, sitting on plants.
• Eventually he had made enough bird pictures to make a book, and it was instantly a huge success.