Wildlife & Railway Art - Frédérique Lucas

Look guys here's a really cool commission I recently got to work on. Someone asked me to create a speculative illustration of a hybrid between a False killer whale and Pacific white-sided dolphin. A very fun mental exercise with a little sleuthing involved!

The intended hybrid does not exist as far as we know, however both Lags and Pseudorcas have hybridised with - you guessed it - our favourite free-for-all baby maker the Common bottlenose dolphin. By looking at those hybrids I could see how the different colour patterns interacted, and try to sort of "filter out" the middle man. Lucky for me, Pseudorcas have a very similar colour scheme to bottlenoses, so I could make some inferences there too.

I'm quite pleased with the end result! Of course I can't say whether this is truly what a hybrid between these species would look like, but I do think it's a well informed guess. Makes for a pretty dolphin!

Cetacean colour anomalies existing as a gradient let's goooooo.

No seriously I love it when this is a thing. Still part of the colour anomalies poster(s) series. Currently 102 illustrations down, and quite a few more to go.

Depicted here are Atlantic spotted dolphin, Pacific white-sided dolphin and Striped dolphin, with various colour-altering afflictions.

• HYBRID DOLPHINS • - Species: Northern right whale dolphin (Lissodelphis borealis) x Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens) - Parentage: unknown, possibly dam x sire - Status in the wild: probable | Status in captivity: X View the entire hybrid dolphin series

Every once in a while southern right whale dolphins grace whale-watchers with their presence. And, swimming alongside them, is usually another species: the dusky dolphin. Duskies often go alone, but rarely do the right whale dolphins appear without their finned friends. Curiously, both species find their mirrors on the opposite hemisphere. Here swim the northern right whale dolphin (Lisso) and Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lag), which not only look similar but are just as close-knit. All that socialising down south gave us our previous hybrid. And it seems the same has happened up north.

Although never ‘publicly’ observed (let alone scientifically described) there have been sightings of apparent hybrids in the Pacific. They were described as essentially a Lisso, except for that tell-tale mini dorsal fin in black and grey. Sadly I have not seen photos myself, but I spoke to people who have. They are secondhand accounts though and differ slightly: one said the hybrid had noticeably bigger pectoral fins and snout like a Lag, while the other said it looked like a Lisso spare the dorsal fin. These descriptions were invaluable, yet granted few solid details. As such the entire illustration should be labeled an ‘educated guess’. The true appearance of this hybrid is unknown.

However, known right whale dolphin hybrids offered some clues. The dorsal fin was a give-away: the colouring borrowed from Lags, with the reduced shape and size seen in the other hybrids. Due to this one being described as “looking like a Lisso, except-” I chose a very slim body shape, less influenced by the Lag. Interesting to note is that southern Lissos are a lot sturdier than their northern counterparts, especially in the face, and it shows in the hybrids too! Most of all I debated the colour of the throat. How much influence would the Lag’s white have on the Lisso’s steady black? Neither of my sources mentioned it - but it would be easy to miss in a fleeting encounter. In the end a fellow hybrid made me opt for an entirely off-white throat, with an extra white patch for the Lisso’s chin patch. Add some light facial markings and we get something that clearly has Lag influenced beak and pectoral fins, but which could also easily be mistaken for a normal Lisso when seen in a pod - spare that dorsal fin. It’s funny, creating illustrations like this. All the choices made are logically sound, and yet there is still a good chance the actual hybrid does not look like this at all. Maybe one day another one will be seen and we can all marvel at the photographs. Until then, this is my best guess.

• REFERENCES • - A. Janiger and T. Pusser, personal communication

Namu’s sketchbook p3

Belugas! Belugas belugas belugas!! This is where we come to the first pages of photo studies, and thus the end (albeit partial) to the general anatomical mayhem that usually dominates my sketches.

So, beluga studies. Coincidentally I also really, really love the narwhal sketch on the third page. That face is just just right. Sometimes that happens by accident and when you’re least expecting it - or even trying - and I think my fellow artists can attest to the annoyance of that phenomenon. Of course these things never happen when it actually matters and you’re working on, say, a high profile commission.

A few of these pages, including the last, were made while I was in Sweden - there comes the first of many moose (mooses? meese???) - the very last bit of 2014. All the Atlantic spotted dolphin studies on the rest of the page were actually preparatory work for my painting ‘Foreign Traditions’! Also, birds. Lots and lots of birds.

See all entries here!

Pacific white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens)

A scientific illustration done just for fun; these days it’s rare. I definitely need to do more of them! But a while back I at least found an excuse to finally paint one of my favourite cetaceans... the Pacific white-sided dolphin. They're also known simply as 'Lag', in reference to their scientific name, even though they share their genus with five other species.

Pacific white-sided dolphins reside in the cool waters of the northern (you guessed it) Pacific Ocean. In the south Pacific lives a very similar looking dolphin, the Dusky dolphin (L. obscurus), which these guys diverged from some 2 million years ago. Pacific white-sides are exceedingly pretty cetaceans with complex markings in shades of grey, black and white. Although highly distinctive, there is a lot of variation in markings between populations and individuals, sometimes subtle, sometimes very obvious. Perhaps best known in US waters is an anomalous colouration pattern known as 'Brownell's dolphin', so named because naturalists first believed it to be a new species.