Words

Dale Dyer – Bird Artist, Ornithological Illustrator

I make paintings for books about birds. Mostly field guides, but also books about apsects of birds' life histories and geography. I have been working in this field since the mid 1990’s. Birds are wonderful subjects because they are beautiful – colorful, shapely, and lively – but I am also very interested in the science of life, and look at the paintings as an opportunity to explain what’s interesting and significant about the birds. Thus a field guide, for instance, full of vivid colors, shapes and patterns, is also a portrait of a region’s biogeography.

I am also of course a birdwatcher (‘birder’), and in the paintings I try to reflect the excitement of watching birds. I have spent a lot of time with field guides, as problem solving resources, as study guides, but also as promises of future experiences with birds. When you are travelling to a new place, leafing through the field guide fills you with the thrill of anticipation.

Much has been said about illustration and art, and I’ll avoid saying much more, except to counter the idea that the utilitarian nature of scientific illustration negates it as aesthetic production. For me, much of the excitement in making these paintings comes from the way that the communication of information and the expression of beauty stimulate and increase each other.

I also hope this work makes some contribution toward the conservation of our bird life, through facilitating ecotourism, but also in giving people a vivid portrait of what we are protecting.

Process

People always want to know what the paintings are based on. And of course the simplest answer is that I do my research and base them on every source of information available. For me this begins with specimens – study skins (see below) – which are measured and compared, and I almost never paint a field guide figure without a study skin at hand. Often my focus on what aspect of the species to feature is based on a review of study skins.

Of course I do a great deal of looking at birds in life. Birding, but not always the way other birders bird. I spend a lot of time looking at birds after I’ve identified them, and can “waste” a lot of time on common birds. Do I draw from life? I do, but not a lot. Drawing involves a lot of looking at the paper, and I’d rather spend the usually brief moment a bird is in front of me looking at it and analyzing its appearance. My memory is pretty good, and I often write down notes and make sketches after the fact.

Photos are great, and I could look at bird photos endlessly, but a photo rarely provides exactly what you need. That is, after all, why we need bird illustrations. We are now in the great age of bird photography, and part of my research is to collect photos, in the past cut out and filed from published sources, but now mostly from the web. I do not do much bird photography myself. Photographs serve as reminders for posture and feather position, and often are crucial for information on bare parts coloration.

And of course I will review anything relevant in the literature. One point that I should make here, though, is that though I love looking at other artist’s illustrations, they are never the basis for mine. I stick to primary sources.