Q&A: Diana Sudyka

Diana Sudyka is a freelance illustrator and amateur birder whose passions come together in The Tiny Aviary, a blog where she showcases her paintings of birds. Diana and I volunteer together behind the scenes at Chicago’s Field Museum, and recently I asked her to tell me more about how she combines art and science.

You’re a trained artist who’s designed band posters, book jackets, invitations, and commissioned paintings. How did you get into creating natural history paintings of birds? And what does taxidermy have to do with it?

I grew up watching PBS nature specials and looking at old encyclopedias with beautiful color illustrations of plants and animals. A lot of my childhood was also spent outdoors, exploring forests and climbing trees. I wanted to learn more about what I was seeing in those forests. A favorite aunt gave me a Peterson bird guide; I carried the book everywhere. I remember being on a field trip in third grade to the Field Museum of Natural history, and referring to it while looking at bird dioramas. Adolescence hit, and my interest waned until after college, when I moved to Chicago, and began to crave some connection to nature again. Out came my tattered Peterson guide, and off I went on weekends to hike, camp, and bird watch in parks, or along Lake Michigan. Those hikes became a way for me to learn about and appreciate that natural history of Illinois and the Midwest, and birds provided my first window in to that appreciation.

Several years ago, I was introduced to a Field Museum ornithologist. I work from a home studio as an illustrator, and wanted to volunteer once a week to get out of the house. The ornithologist was Dave Willard, the Bird Division’s collections manager. Dave asked if I would be willing to make study skins of birds for the collections. I was never specifically interested in taxidermy per se, but liked the idea of using my hands and learning about avian anatomy. I was so excited to be working with scientists. Every week I would come home tremendously inspired. To document the experience, I began The Tiny Aviary. I did quick watercolor sketches of every species of bird I prepared, and wrote about them. It helped me to cement what I was learning every week. The blog and my paintings gradually evolved into something broader than just documenting my museum experience. It was a way to share my work, and my love of natural history and science.

Describe your typical painting process.

My main medium is watercolor. I usually start with a couple of preliminary pencil sketches. I tend to work from photographs more than specimens, but do use both. One of the great things about volunteering at the Field is having access to the phenomenal specimen collections. Dr. Willard has been generous in making the bird collection accessible to not only biologists and other researchers, but to artists as well. When I go in to work from a specimen, it is with the intent on making as accurate a rendering as possible. In general, though, most of my paintings don’t strive to be very anatomically or scientifically accurate. I’m not counting primary and secondary feathers. Straightforward scientific illustration has never been a goal, and I don’t
think I would be very good at it. I try to get the overall character of a given species, and then try to infuse it with something more personal.

There’s a long tradition of natural history illustration dedicated to depicting animals in their natural environments. You typically do the same—but you’ve also used a starker eye, as in the painting below. Photographer Andrew Zuckerman is engaged in creating yet another kind of image, one that removes creatures from their habitats entirely. Do you have a philosophy about the ideal form scientific illustration should take?

Zuckerman’s birds, being entirely removed from their habitats, have an abstract quality. At the same time, the photos employ elements of traditional portraiture. The visual isolation of subjects is also what guide books do, in a way. Open a Peterson or Sibley guide, and you have these little paintings of birds on a white background, completely removed from their habitat. This is obviously to make it easier to note field marks in identifying a particular species of bird. I see what Audubon and other naturalist illustrators of that time were doing as the traditional portraiture end of the spectrum. People who bought Audubon’s Birds of North America most likely never had any intention of setting foot in the field. Through the book, they could get a taste of what seeing a particular bird in its natural habitat might have been like without having to trudge through forest and swamp. Those images also conveyed something of Audubon and his aesthetic vision.

My ideal form of scientific illustration would be one that allows for a personal aesthetic, and a connection to the subject to shine through without compromising scientific accuracy. I think there are very few illustrators that are able to balance this well. C.F. Tunnicliffe, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and even Charley Harper come to mind. There was a exhibit at the Field museum last year of some of Fuertes’s paintings. They were scientifically precise, but his hand was very much present in those lively renderings.

Do you ever, like Audubon, draw from life, through a telescope or binoculars?

I haven’t tried to do this yet. I have also never tried to eat any of the bird species I have painted, as Audubon supposedly ate almost everything he shot.

Your work at the Field Museum has a clear scientific purpose. In what ways do you think your paintings contribute to or participate in the same scientific spirit?

What I do at the Field becomes part of the collections there, and ideally will be used by future generations of scientists to further our understanding of the natural world. I do see my paintings as an extension of that work, but outside of the context of that specific community. The paintings are initially for me and my education. They are a way to indulge the passion I have for science and the natural world. By putting those images on my blog, and writing about them and my museum experience, I am hoping to engage other lay persons like myself. I want to foster an appreciation for nature and what biologists do, as well as an awareness of the diversity of life with which we share space; even densely urban space such as Chicago.

As a corollary, in what ways does going away and painting a bird differ from preparing a study skin of the same bird?

Preparing a study skin is a meditative process for me. I have to be focused, as there is a clear sequence of steps to follow in order to get the skin off intact without causing damage to the feathers. Ideally, once you begin the process, it’s best to follow through the steps to the end without interruption. A small bird such as a warbler takes me roughly 45 minutes to complete. A large raptor can take two hours or more. It’s not only a meditation on process, but it is also on that particular bird. I find myself thinking: How did it die? Was it feeding well? Was it able to breed? And so on. When I am away from the lab and creating a painting of a bird that I have worked on, it’s a different type of experience, of course. I don’t have the bird and the reality
of its presence in front of me any more. I have the visual impression that it left in my mind, as well as any scientific or anecdotal information that I was able to glean from one of the ornithologists. How I interpret all of that visually can be a very organic, subjective process.

Which of the bird paintings on Tiny Aviary is your favorite, and why?

I did some studies for an art show called “The Exquisite City,” put together by Kathleen Judge. Kathleen gathered a bunch of Chicago artists to create buildings out of cardboard. The buildings were displayed in a gallery with a soundtrack of common urban sounds (car traffic, trains, etc.). Walking around the gallery gave you the sense of being immersed in this small, fantastical city.

Instead of a building she asked me to do several paintings of birds that either live in or migrate through a city like Chicago. I wanted the paintings to bring awareness to how many species, while migrating through urban areas, die by colliding with building windows. My favorite two Tiny Aviary paintings were part of that series. One you already mentioned: the two study skins of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers (Sphyrapicus varius). The other is of an American Woodcock (Scolopax minor). I achieved an accuracy in these studies that I don’t normally strive for and hadn’t attained in my previous watercolors.

You paint many native birds and migratory species that travel through the U.S., but you also paint birds that you’ve never seen (or never will, since they’re extinct). Which of these would you most like to see?

The bird that I would most like to see still exists, but is extremely rare. Kakapos are large, flightless parrots endemic to New Zealand. They look like large, green owls. They are no longer on the mainland, due to introduced predators. Some time ago the remaining population was relocated to small islands off of the New Zealand coast, and are very closely monitored.

I can’t think of a person I know who doesn’t find birds fascinating. What’s your take on why they capture our minds and hearts so strongly?

On the surface, there is the fact that they can fly and we have always been fascinated by flight. They are beautiful of course; the range of plumage color, and their often melodious calls. Their annual migrations often mark the seasons for us. Perhaps it is an issue of accessibility too. So many people are bird watching now, and I think in part that is because it is a relatively easy way to engage with nature and the returns are great. You don’t have to put a lot in to it. Meaning, you don’t necessarily have to travel to another country, slog through some malaria infested jungle, or even get in your car to see something wonderful. If anyone takes a little bit of time to educate themselves, even the most seemingly banal and ubiquitous of species will become fascinating, such as starlings and pigeons.

Please tell us a story you love to tell, either about a bird or an ornithologist.

One of my favorite stories regarding birds, and bird behavior specifically, has to do with the Antarctic Explorer Apsley Cherry Garrard. Garrard wrote The Worst Journey in the World, a memoir of the time he spent in Antarctica with Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole. Garrard’s favorite inhabitants of that continent were the Adélie Penguins. Years after returning home to England, he became an outspoken advocate for their protection.

Part of Adélie courtship behavior involves stones. Adélies make their nests on the ground out of stones, and a worthy mate will present his chosen with a rock for such a purpose. Garrard was a shy man, and particularly shy around women. It wasn’t until quite late in life that he met and fell in love with a woman that would become his wife. She cherished his stories of the Antarctic and of his favorite birds the Adélies. Many months had passed since they had first met, and one day while sitting on a park bench Garrard leaned over and picked a stone up off the ground and placed it beside her. She immediately understood the meaning of the gesture.

You can visit Diana at her fine art website, purchase prints of her work on Etsy, or follow her on The Tiny Aviary.