1. Mind, Body & Spirit:
Depicting People as Animals
Jaquita L.C. Hawthorne

2. ME
• I consider myself a spiritual person.
• I got interested in spirit animals in grade
school

3. My Spirit Animal?
• Have you ever had a
strange encounter with
an animal?
• There are different ways
to figure out your spirit
animal, but you need to
have an open mind.

4. Spirit Animal ?
In the world of spirit animals, animals
symbolize:
• Characteristics of our personality
• Skills or traits that we have or that we
want to gain
• A situation or emotions
• Spirit animals can also offer guidance and
understanding

5. Artists frequently use
animals as subject matter in
their art. Through time
animals have appeared in
paintings, sculptures, and
prints. Animals are also
symbolic. Many cultures
through the ages have
observed specific animals
as in place of gods, power,
the supernatural, and in the

6. Thesis
The concept of spiritual animals
inspires me to focus my creative
work on them. In particular, I
am thinking through the
problem of how to portray
friends using animal metaphors.
I hope that my project will help
viewers to identify animal traits
like I do within my figure
drawings, while showing the

7. My Roots
Mainly Blood Tribe
41
7
52
52

8. Respect For Nature
“Every seed is awakened and
so is all animal life. It is
through this mysterious
power that we too have our
being and we therefore yield
to our animal neighbors the
same right as ourselves, to
inhabit this land.” -Sitting Bull

9. Almost there
I started thinking about my project last
summer. I knew I wanted to use skills and
techniques that I learned in figure
drawing classes. I also knew that I
wanted to use my friends as models to
show their different personalities.

10. Figure drawings done as
part of coursework at
Ripon College.
On the left is a selfportrait by
Rembrandt, and on the
right is a sketch of Adam
for the Sistine Ceiling by
Michelangelo.

11. “for Color girls who have Considered
Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf”
A Series of 20 Poems written by Ntozake Shange in 1975
– Experimentally choreographed poem.
– Focus on issues women of color go through.
– Watching the movie by Tyler Perry in 2009 I was
inspired to do my project on it, adapted to issues that
female students deal with here on the Ripon College
campus.

12. “aura lanterns”
• This Idea was like a puzzle
missing pieces.
• I loved the idea of using some of
the skills I learned from working
on plays at the college.
• I wanted to do a full figure
drawing of each one of my
friends on each side with their
own aura color
• ………..I thought it still needed
work

13. Other Ideas
• A collage of figure drawings in different
perspectives.
• Having a model represent different
elements.
• “Line of Fate” showing how people are
connected.
• Then I thought about Spirit Animals.

14. Body Painting
Guido
Daniele
Kim Joon
Craig Tracy
Lex

15. Models
5 female models
They all have
different animals

16. Rebecca Nieves
Natives acknowledged
that the bat was highly
sensitive to their
surroundings and for
that reason was
considered a symbol of
awareness, dreaming,
and vision.

17. Lindsey Dawson
Natives believe parrots show
intelligence, good
temperament, and a sense of
international relations.
Parrots teach listening to all of
nature and awakening to the
language within using insight for
more open communications.

18. Jasmine Lemus
Natives thought foxes
encourages us to think
outside of the box and use
our intelligence in
different, creative ways. The
fox also brings us a message
to try to approach our
circumstances differently
that we normally would.

19. Anna Rashbaum
Natives believe rabbits are
highly social animals,
displaying genuine feelings
of happiness and affection.
Vice versa, they can display
aggression, jealousy, and
hostility in their social

20. Myself
This power animal is a
good inspiration for
adding more color into
your life and selfexpression. Those who
have the butterfly as a
totem animal may be
naturally inclined to
express themselves
openly, to reflect their
colors into their
environment.

21. Final Project
For my project I am considering using the
figure drawing skills that I have learned over
the years to depict my friends using animal
metaphors that I choose for them. My

22. Artists on the Same wave
length as me
These artists, from left to right, are Elizeabeth Beals, Ina
Woolcott, Zakhar Krylov, and Laura Frisk.