The Native Conifer Project

Over the past 8 months I’ve been collecting specimens of and drawing native conifers of the bioregion.  I really love trees and have always wished I could identify them on a hike or around town. When drawing something you really get to know it, so drawing all the native conifers of the bioregion would be a great way to learn how to identify trees!

I was surprised to learn there’s only around 33-39 native conifer species (I'm over halfway done!), the iffiness is where you draw your boarders. There’s a Southern cluster of trees which, while technically in the bioregion, their native habitat only scrapes the Cascadian bioregion, they’re in a transition zone in Northern CA which flows into Southern CA.

Drawing thirty-odd trees doesn’t seem like a lot but each tree collection of tree, branch, cone, seeds (drawing in graphite and coloring digitally) takes an average of 20 hours. The above work was about 380 hours of work. Unfortunately, my iPad crashed and I lost all but one of my digitally colored working papers, so I’ll have to redo about 100 hours of work, whoops. (Always backup your work when you’re finished with it!)

Because I’ve learned so much drawing these trees, I’d like to pass on the education by making identification cards. At my current rate I’ll be done with the trees in August but I really would like to add a bark illustration to each. With that, packaging design, and tree info, it’s definitely a  time intensive project but I’m aiming to finish it this year. If you have any thoughts on what info you'd be interested in knowing about a tree, please let me know!

I currently have 2 packs of tree illustration postcards, 12 designs and a tree riso print with 12 trees up on my etsy. I won't be making any new postcard packs, as I'm getting into lesser known trees. The 2 packs are all well known conifers. . . for the most part.

If you're interested in following updates on this project, I post new trees regularly on instagram, you can catch me @erinfox24

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