Here’s What I Learned When I Painted Every Bird In North America

Just a few North American warblers.

A few years ago, I saw a Pop Chart Lab with every species of North American bird — including some that have gone extinct in the last hundred years. I looked at the poster, fell in love with the poster, and then placed the poster in my digital shopping cart, because I had to have it.

But before I hit “Purchase,” I identified that the emotion I felt around this poster was not so much covetous as it was envious. I didn’t want to have the poster; I wanted to draw the poster. In the notes on Pop Chart Lab’s website, someone had written that this poster took over 400 hours to draw. I thought, “Wow. Imagine spending 400 hours thinking about birds, and learning about birds, and drawing birds. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

So when my grad school drawing instructor told us to formulate a final project for class, I walked over to the art supply store and bought the largest sheet of watercolor paper they had — it was twenty whole dollars, which I’ve always considered an unthinkable cost for a piece of paper. But I was on a mission, and the mission deserved the highest quality Arches sheet available. I was going to draw every bird in North America.

I figured that this would take me far fewer than 400 hours, because I wouldn’t need to make sure my pictures were perfect, and because I already had Pop…