@jhfrench / jhfrench.tumblr.com
Happy New Year’s Eve! After a year that was tumultuous for everyone, I hope the next year finds you enjoying life’s simple moments again. I am looking forward to returning to bird watching, foraging, and hiking in the warmer weather. Being an artist has made me a keen observer, and I hope to sharpen my skills in this next year!
My heart is with the people and creatures that live in the path of California’s wildfires. Though I only called the Monterey Bay my home for a little over a year, I know places like Salinas and Big Sur like the back of my hand. To imagine them suffering the effects of these fires is heartbreaking. After hearing that Ventana Wildlife Society’s condor sanctuary has burned down, I worry for these endangered birds too. Structures can be rebuilt, and wildfires are part of California’s ecology, but these fires are bigger than ever before. Stay safe, friends.
Monchichi the cat is the picture of elegance! I love that I got to depict her in such a fanciful dress. 👗
Grassland Habitat
The delightful Grasshopper Sparrow is often seen during breeding season singing atop partially exposed stems or on fences. Wild oats and purple needlegrass are among the many species that make up the swaying golden fields these guys call home!
There are three more illustrations in this series showing different habitats of Big Sur. 😊
Another west coast Chickadee: the Mountain Chickadee. This little bird can be seen high in conifers, hanging upside down eating from pine cones. I remember my excitement seeing them at my campsite when I first visited Yosemite!
Purple martins are large swallows that nest in cavities, sometimes making use of hallows in dead trees. The male is a rich velvety violet, which flashes blue and lavender in the sun.
This is a preview of more work for Ventana Wildlife Society (spy that California condor in the background). I’m working on a series of vignettes showing different habitat types in Big Sur. I’ll share more previews and final pieces in the next month!
Last few drawings for @cornellbirds land trust bird conservation initiative! These two birds represented land parcels in Vermont and Colorado respectively! Golden-winged Warbler; person managing edge forest habitat using a chainsaw; Lewis’ Woodpecker.
Another batch of illustrations for @cornellbirds land trust bird conservation initiative. In this one, some rarer grassland birds! Bobolink (one of my faves!); Henslow Sparrow; Upland Sandpiper; conservation educator teaching people about grassland ecology in Wisconsin.
Still catching up on posting some things I did for @cornellbirds. I made a series of illustrations for the Lab’s land trust bird conservation initiative. Their small grant program helps land owners manage habitat for bird species of concern and awards money to management projects every year! ⠀⠀ In this post: Florida Scrub-Jay; people setting a prescribed fire in Florida scrub habitat; American Kestrel; Oregon Vesper Sparrow; land owner surveying cattle grazing area.
Here’s another oldie, one of the first illustrations I ever did for a researcher. It features the common side-blotched lizard. I remember the researcher I did this for excitedly explaining how their mating strategies worked. Explanation below:
The males of the common side-blotched lizard come in three main categories of throat color: orange, yellow, and blue. The throat color determines the male’s mating strategy. The orange-throated males are good at stealing mates from the blue-throated males and keep large harems of females. Blue-throated males tend to defend small territories, with one mate, and are good at catching other males sneaking in. Yellow-throated males are phenotypically similar to females, and so behave as “sneakers,” infiltrating harems and stealing mates for themselves. The result is a fascinating rock-paper-scissors of mating strategy! This particular illustration was to show how, because of these different mating strategies, populations tend toward either being polymorphic (made up all throat colors) or monomorphic (made up of just one throat color). Herps are the coolest!
I made these graphics to go in a poster series about how food webs have changed in the Bering Sea. As the ocean warms, it’s causing populations of fish and plankton to shift, impacting the seabirds who eat them. Researchers were able to discover this by sampling feathers from both live birds and museum specimens.
I worked on this poster series with another artist for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. If you take a tour of the Lab sometime in the next few months, you’ll be able to see them on the wall in the Museum of Vertebrates!
One of my last projects for the Lab of Ornithology was illustrating these two subspecies of red-backed fairywren. This is a great example of when digital illustration is better (and WAY faster) than traditional. After painting the bird in Photoshop, changing the back color took a matter of minutes. ⠀⠀ I’m going to miss Ithaca and the Lab so much now that my time as the Bartels illustrator is over, but I am thankful to have had the experience! Over there next few weeks, I’ll be taking a break to travel and visit friends and family. I’ll post some older work until I get back into the swing of things!
I’ve been promising to post this forever... and it’s finally done! This is the digital painting I’ve been working on of the Big Sur rivermouth in Andrew Molera State Park. It’s a special spot where a huge variety of plants, animals, and habitats can be seen. There are over 30 animal species featured in this painting! ⠀⠀ This will be printed very large for Ventana Wildlife Society’s new Discovery Center exhibit. I’ve been struggling to figure out how to display this on my website, because you need to be able to zoom in to see all the species in detail. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know! 😅 In the meantime, you can all see the zoomed out version! This painting was so fun to make in collaboration with Mike Stake and Cathy Hamilton from VWS—even though I did the painting, we truly constructed this scene together. Collaborating with scientists and other artists is one of the things I love the most about being a science illustrator!
Recently finished this painting for Ventana Wildlife Society. Though condor population recovery is their main focus today, in 1986 VWS started a program to reintroduce bald eagles to central California, where they’d been absent for 60 years. Thanks to the program’s success, you can once again see bald eagles soaring along the central coast. This painting is meant to showcase both bald eagles and condors as major conservation success stories. ⛰
So excited to start painting this winter feeder scene for Project Feederwatch, using some new Photoshop brushes. Can anyone name all six birds in this? 🐦
