By Holly Hartigan<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m always paying attention to the posture and the angle of the body when I\u2019m drawing,\u201d says Ditner, a nature illustrator with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology<\/a>. \u201cYou 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI like to have everything in place,\u201d she says, \u201cand then there\u2019s that little gratifying moment of it coming together\u2014that little pop of the eye coming to life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n As staff biological illustrator<\/a> at the Cornell Lab and graphics editor for its Living Bird<\/em><\/a> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Birds are deceptively complex. Understanding the bones, muscles, and feather groups is what makes an illustration come alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re like a little feather puff, right?\u201d Ditner says. \u201cWe look at them and they\u2019re kind of rounded, a little bit pointy, but what\u2019s going on underneath all those feathers is really intricate. Unless you understand what\u2019s going on underneath, you don\u2019t understand why the feathers are doing what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Jillian](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/02\/2024_1474_JK_020-1024x576.jpg\")