Decoupage is an art that utilizes layers of paper and glue to give the impression of depth and perspective, and is one way to recreate the look of fur in an art project. You can draw your animal freehand or use an existing likeness like a photo or stencil before filling it in with layers of small pieces of paper to replicate the layers and texture of fur. This would work better on a smaller area like a greeting card unless you want to do an exceptionally detailed but difficult project. You can also add depth throughout the image by making the by varying the color of the layers and individual pieces.
Students of fashion and history alike can learn a lot about their disciplines through art projects on animals with fur. Such art projects can cover diverse topics like 18th-century colonial fashions or aboriginal clothing and culture. Modern concerns about fur clothing and their substitutes can also be demonstrated in an art project on fur-bearing animals by helping to display the differences between fake fur alternatives. Historic clothing can be recreated for period reenactment. Native groups that lived in the same areas as certain fur-bearing animals would have used fur for both clothing and housing.
The look of fur in a two-dimensional art project can also be created with specific techniques and tools. Using construction paper and a mix of pastels, chalk and erasers, even very young artists can recreate fur in an art project. Kids and adults can use a real stuffed animal as a reference when first drawing the form of their animal subject using chalk, then using a mix of colors and different drawing techniques. This technique might be ideal for a student who needs to recreate the look of fur for a school project or for an art class to help students learn about texture and depth in art.
Art projects are still useful to those in the fields of science and research. An environmental scientist, economist or biologist can study the effect the fur trade had on certain North American animals and the and integrate art in the project in the form of models or graphs about animal population or value. An engineer or chemist might be interested in fur substitutes, so models of animals or samples of fake fur arranged in a display are examples of scientific art projects on animals with fur.