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As their capstone project, College of The Albemarle’s Drawing I and Drawing II students collaborated on the creation of a Bestiary. This type of book has a long history that dates to the ninth century. In Medieval Europe bestiaries featured fabulous creatures, some real and some imagined, that were paired with moral stories on subjects of importance at the time: the Church, the monarchy, romance, and death. Over time, bestiaries have become a vehicle for creative expression and visual entertainment with a less serious purpose. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, for example, publishers often commissioned well-known artists to illustrate such books as special editions for collectors. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Toulouse Lautrec, and Raoul Dufy all created illustrations for bestiaries.

To begin, each student in the drawing class drew a letter (or two) at random from the alphabet. They had to use that letter in the name of their "beast" or in an adjective to describe its character. They also used word lists to come up with personal characteristics that could be symbolically represented by an animal or animals with those characteristics. They examined historical bestiaries, researched imagery and then developed drawings, 18 by 24 inches, using the techniques and media they have been working with this semester. As they developed their drawings they also wrote the stories of their beasts. I compiled all the stories and drawings into a single document, which we had printed onto loose legal-size sheets. On the last day of class, students learned a basic book-binding technique and bound the books themselves. Each student's book has the entire alphabet, all the stories and illustrations, but with their own illustration on the cover.

Gale Flax, Assistant Professor, said, “The students have been a wonderful group and did an amazing job with their research, writing, and creative invention."

Pictured above:

Back row, left to right: Jennifer Jones, Carl Twiford, Christian Willadson, Rudy Sanders, Douglas Dillard, Ronald Rhodes, Chelsea Perry, Marcus Bailey. Middle row, left to right: Jessica Bersin, Angela Brothers, Tequan Hart, Lavar James, China Gregory, Rebekah Brown. Front row, seated, left to right: Andre Price, Cynthia Grantham, Daphne Francis, and Assistant Professor Gale Flax.