"Having studied drawing for a short
while in my youth under good masters, I felt a great desire to
make choice of a style more particularly adapted to the imitation
of feathers than the drawings in water colours that I had been in
the habit of seeing, and moreover, to complete a collection not
only valuable to the scientific class, but pleasing to every
person, by adopting a different course of representation from the
mere profile-like cut figures, given usually in works of that
kind."
Audubon accomplished this objective. Since he portrayed each
bird life size, the larger birds often had to be drawn in
unusual positions to fit within the confines of the copper
plates. These watercolor paintings were thus preparatory studies
for the subsequent double elephant
engravings. Audubon composed them with the size limitations of
the copper plate in mind.
Interestingly, 431 of the original 433 watercolors used
for the 435 engravings, still exist today.
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