- [Nora] I'm kind of amazed at the Oregon coast.

The tide is constantly changing.

The beach itself is constantly changing.

There is an endless parade of things going on in the natural world here.

- [Voiceover] For most of us, this clump of washed up kelp is kind of a stinky eyesore, but to Nora Sherwood.

- That's habitat right now, you know, it's life as a plant is over, but there's a whole world in there.

- [Voiceover] Nora is the kind of artist whose work you're as likely to find in a textbook as a gallery.

- We were the ones who enjoyed the dissections, bones skulls, guts, you know, whatever it is.

Like.

Oh, wow.

That's really cool.

That weird poo.

- So well, I know these look silly.

I always try to remember to take them off before I, before I go and answer the door.

But they're very useful, especially for this kind of work.

- [Voiceover] Nora lived in Lincoln city.

Full-time since 2014.

- I'm from planet earth.

My father was, he's a retired foreign service diplomat.

So I was born in Colombia.

We were in Finland, Sweden, and then Chile.

And then I graduated from high school in Spain.

At which point I came back to the US to go to college.

So this is going to be a little bit of a study, so that you can identify the leaf.

And then I'm going to add the very tiny pink bloom.

So I'm going to get the entire area wet, and then you kind of watch it for when the sheen is gone, but it's still damp.

Yeah.

Yup.

There we are.

Okay.

So then I'm going to use this paint, and I'm just going to spread it on lately everywhere.

So cool.

It's so cool to lay in more color, while it's still wet.

Just watch the color disperse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like it.

Those moments sometimes, when something just really works.

One of the things about a science illustrators we're not married to a medium, so I just keep using whatever media is necessary to get it to look like, what I want it to look.

I do a lot of work in colored pencil and it's just amazing for showing shininess in bugs.

And a lot of color theory goes into that.

That's a lot of what makes that realistic is understanding how to use compliments and triads to darken a primary color.

For all of these with their compliments, to get it to roll back down.

I was in high-tech and I was enjoying my career, but I just really felt like I was ready for something different.

I just, you know, life is long and you need a few chapters.

And the thing that I kept coming back to was a zoology class and how much I enjoyed that.

- [Voiceover] But to build a new career.

Nora had to study both art and scientific illustration.

- [Nora] That was very difficult because I'm not an artist.

I wasn't an artist, right.

I guess I'm an artist now.

Before I was not an artist, but I really believe in the 10,000 hour concept, it's not talent, it's hard work and a deep desire to learn how to do it.

And at the end of the day it was all about trying to figure out how to see.

I can literally remember the moment when I was able to get my brain to quiet, and actually draw what I saw.

And it was a chocolate chip Seastar.

So I was looking at that Seastar arm.

It was a foreshortened view and I was trying to draw it, trying to draw it.

And all of a sudden it's like, oh I have to draw it like that.

So I'm working on a, a slimy cap mushroom.

And so I'm trying to get scratch board to look wet and slimy.

- [Voiceover] The scratch board is coated with ink and reverses the usual relationship between light and dark.

- [Nora] Rather than applying media.

You're actually removing media.

So every time you remove media you're bringing things closer.

And my favorite implement is the good old Exacto knife.

- [Nora] One of the things that I really wanted to do in becoming a science illustrator was to illustrate the natural world, to try to get people to think more deeply about what we're doing with our natural world and the fact that we are abusing it and it's going away, you know, it's, it's going away.

I can definitely just sit here and do this for hours.

That would make some people just nuts, but I really like it.

- [Voiceover] This new project is a commission for Cinnamon teal lifting off from some water.

- [Nora] Half of my time is spent just looking for usable reference images.

Okay.

So yay.

Here is a Cinnamon teal, and he's a little bit too deep into the process, but that's going to be a helpful image for sure.

So I have a feeling and I have to like take a Mallard and turn him into a Cinnamon teal.

I think I'll just look for other ducks to help me figure out what to do.

And I don't know.

Oh, wow.

Look at that Common Merganser take off.

Ah, oh my gosh.

Look at the feet are just barely going into the first big run.

That they're going to use to take off.

That is gorgeous.

I always go to the Slater Museum.

They have a bird tails and feathers database.

- [Nora] It's it just kind of soothes my eyeballs to have this much green around me.

So this is Sitka spruce cones, and we have a lot of Douglass Squirrels here that eat the seeds out of these.

So the False Lily, it's evergreen, it's here year round and it has this lovely heart shaped leaf.

It'll little tiny white flowers.

And they're absolutely gorgeous.

One thing that I really love is we have lots of Rough-skinned newts that come through here and they just tromp right by the house with their bright orange undersides.

- [Nora] This is a fabulous poem from Baba Doom, who was the Senegalese Forester.

"In the end we will conserve only what we love.

We will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught."

And I think a picture is worth a thousand words.

So I'm just doing my, my tiny little bit to get people to think about the natural world.