Art and science overlap for nature illustrators

Jillian Ditner lightly pencils in a circle for a head and sketches the eye. She places the beak, wing and tail. Just shapes at first, gradually a Cape May warbler emerges.

“I’m always paying attention to the posture and the angle of the body when I’m drawing,” said Ditner, a nature illustrator with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “You can see that from the tip of the tail to the bill, the whole bird is on a bit of a forward lean. Capturing that is going to get the dynamic part of that pose to come through.”

Once she has the proportions perfect, she adds detail with a sharp pencil before layering in color in watercolor. Getting the eye just right comes toward the end.

Scientific accuracy underlies art for Jillian Ditner, staff biological illustrator for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and graphics editor for its Living Bird magazine.

“I like to have everything in place, and then there’s that little gratifying moment of it coming together – that little pop of the eye coming to life,” she said.

As staff biological illustrator at the Cornell Lab and graphics editor for its Living Bird magazine, Ditner is part science communicator, part artist. As an educator and coordinator of the Bartels Science Illustration Program, she mentors artists who hope to follow in her footsteps.

Birds are deceptively complex. Understanding the bones, muscles and feather groups is what makes an illustration come alive.

“They’re like a little feather puff, right?” Ditner said. “We look at them and they’re kind of rounded, a little bit pointy, but what’s going on underneath all those feathers is really intricate. Unless you understand what’s going on underneath, you don’t understand why the feathers are doing what they’re doing.”

Ditner studied fine arts in college, but a love of birds and nature brought her to scientific illustration when she got involved with organizations that advocate for turning off nighttime lights that disrupt bird migrations.

“That was a big bird-and-design-coming-together moment for me,” she said.

A Bartels illustrator-in-residence in 2017, Ditner returned to run the program in 2019.

As staff biological illustrator at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and graphics editor for its Living Bird magazine, Jillian Ditner is part science communicator, part artist. As an educator and director of the Bartels Science Illustration Program, she mentors artists who hope to follow in her footsteps.

Every year, the Bartels Science Illustration Program hosts an artist-in-residence who creates art and infographics to accompany scientific publications and for the Cornell Lab’s outreach activities, building their portfolios and connections with people in the scientific community.

“It’s been a really nice combination of all the different things I’ve been interested in for so long: graphic design, science, illustration, birds,” Ditner said. “It all has come together really beautifully in this current role for me, especially mentoring artists, being involved with those learning about science illustration and developing their own career.”

From a sunny workspace overlooking Sapsucker Woods Pond at the Cornell Lab, this year’s Bartels illustrator, Lauren Richelieu, painted cardinals in watercolor and gouache that graced the Lab of Ornithology’s 2024 holiday card. She had recently completed illustrations for a paper on sea bird guano and another about frogs.

Lauren Richelieu, this year’s Bartels Science Illustration Program artist-in-residence, works on an illustration of cardinals in her workspace overlooking Sapsucker Woods Pond at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“I’ve always been very into birds and science,” she said. “Jillian knows so much and is able to point out things that I didn’t necessarily notice. I feel my eyes being trained a little bit more.”

In the spring semester, Richelieu will join Ditner and Irby Lovette, professor of ornithology, to teach the undergraduate course Art and Science of Birds, in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The class is open to any student interested in birds and art, even if they don’t consider themselves artists. It typically has a long wait list.

Brant Georgia ’26, a student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, took the Art and Science of Birds course in 2024 and is now a student assistant cataloguing the Lab of Ornithology’s historic art collection.

He’s accepted commissions for paintings of birds and sold his work at art fairs. During winter break he was working on an oil painting for an ornithological organization in Michigan, his home state.

“What I really got out of this class was the ability to depict birds more accurately and more anatomically correct,” he said.

That has helped him depict bird behaviors in his paintings. “Since I have an understanding of the anatomy of a bird, I can put that bird in whatever position I want it to be in,” he said.

Before meeting Ditner, Georgia expected to pursue science as a career and art as a hobby. Now he sees a future in science illustration. 

“She’s really been sort of a guiding light for me in this career path,” he said.

Media Contact

Becka Bowyer