My transition from vegetarian to veganism began roughly around the time that I decided to focus on art academically and add a second degree to my undergraduate career. I had previously been working towards a degree in Child Development but had been taking several art classes along the way. When I finally decided to add Art as a second major, I was enrolled in the Advanced Drawing course. The first assignment was to pick a topic or theme and create one hundred drawings around this idea. I was at a loss of what to choose – what could I possibly want to draw one hundred times? I mulled over this idea for several days: still life, figure drawing, abstract? None of them appealed to me. I finally approached this assignment with the viewpoint of what would I want to draw one hundred times in an effort to practice and become better at? I was hit with a realization: animals of course!

I had always had a deep love for animals and became a vegetarian at the age of ten when I recognized that the meat on my plate was once a living, breathing creature. I also had a passion for drawing at a young age; and while my love for animals and my love for drawing coexisted, my love for drawing animals was almost nonexistent. Almost – because I did dabble in drawing cartoon animals. But realistic representations of creatures? Never.

Fast forward to my early twenties, working on my two bachelor’s degrees, this assignment of One Hundred Drawings loomed over me and I recognized my desire to learn how to properly draw animals. I had become vegan a few months previously and was really beginning to deepen my connection with the wildlife world and all of its creatures. Suddenly this once-dreaded assignment seemed like an opportunity for artistic and spiritual growth – deepening not only my understanding of the anatomical structures of creatures, but of their emotive and sentient qualities as well.

I set off on my one hundred drawing journey and began drawing portrait-like representations of all kinds of animals. I was invested in the idea of portraying a physical and emotional truth with each portrait – focusing on the soul of the eyes or the expression of the facial and body structure. I drew the maternal qualities into the face of an orangutan, the elusiveness into the scales of a pangolin, the heartache into the eyes of a cow. I drew with the intention that the viewer would be able to experience the same relationship with these creatures by looking at them as I did drawing them. The process, which took about a month to complete, felt like falling in love. I fell in love with each individual animal, with the species, with creaturekind in its entirety. I learned more about the animal kingdom through this process than I had learned in any academic or classroom setting.

When I had completed all one hundred of my animal drawings I was set to present them to my professor and my fellow classmates in a formal critique setting. I carefully laid my heartfelt portraits in rows of ten in the middle of the art studio floor and took my place along the wall, nervous for the response from my peers. It was silent for several minutes as my classmates walked through the aisles of drawings; all I could hear were whisperings of words: “wow” and “oh my gosh”. When the group finally began speaking to me directly, I was shocked by what they had to say. I remember one student said, “It’s like I can feel their souls”. Another stated, “I can feel the delicate care and love that you put into these drawings. It’s apparent in the faces and the bodies of the animals”. The words my professor spoke at the end have never left me: “It’s like a series of self-portraits… of you”.

To this day, almost two years and several hundred drawings later, I still haven’t stopped searching for the link between Humankind and Creaturekind through my artwork. While I deem my One Hundred Drawing journey as successful in establishing this link, I recognize that the search is never over. I continue to draw all kinds of animals in a continued effort to find and strengthen the connection – for myself, the viewers, and the animals we connect with.