Dawn Painter – scientific illustration d.painter@nhm.ac.uk This year sees the long-awaited publication of British Craneflies, by Alan Stubbs. In celebration of this book, I thought I might share some ’behind the scenes’ pictures of the part I played in the collaboration. I will describe my method of working through to the finished illustrations. I have included some of the notes I made during the commission, some photographs that might be of interest and a few unpublished drawings. The first introduction to this exciting project was the brief given to me by Roger Hawkins in 2017. We discussed the creation of line drawings of the male genitalia of approximately 87 Tipulidae species - lateral, dorsal and posterior views, or a combination of these, which amounted to almost 300 drawings in total. Some inner claspers were also necessary as were one or two thumbnails scattered throughout the key, but in the main these are all Alan’s original work. Carim Nahaboo also illustrated a selection of species which feature in plates AA-AH. I worked closely with John Kramer in the early stages of the project and he was kind enough to check my illustrations as I completed them. John and Esko Viitanen have taken many photos of the inner appendages of Tipulids and these were an invaluable reference for the few inner claspers I was required to draw. My thanks go to both. I made particular use of the facilities at the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity where I took the reference photos I needed. I was given access to the synoptic Tipulidae collection in the AMC and the main British and Irish Diptera collection at NHM London provided specimens for the remaining rarer UK species. Thanks to my colleagues at the NHM for accommodating me whist I worked on this project. I did try to make myself useful by sticking barcode labels on the specimens I imaged as I went along and at least honour some curatorial duties whilst working with this specific collection, multi-tasking at its best.

AMC collections. It was hard to find good ‘photogenic’ specimens for several of the less common species where there might only be one or two representatives in the collection. Tipula sarajevensis (Strobl,1898) for example, known only from one British record. Here are my reference images showing subtle positional differences as I tried to find the best angle and most true ‘lateral, ‘posterior’ and ‘dorsal’.

Extra angles were also necessary to get to grips with the complex 3D structures present. I photographed two Nephrotoma sullingtonensis (Edwards, 1938) delicate and dusty para-types. I have cleaned up the images for the purposes of presenting them here, but it was useful having two specimens to reference on this occasion especially when in poor condition.

There are, of course, some very nice quality NHM specimens and they photographed well. I used the AMC’s Cognisys Stackshot Macro Rail system with Canon EOS 800D and the Canon 65mm MPE lens and Macro Twin Lite MT-26EX-RT flash for most of the photographs – with improvised diffusers and adjustable stage and other helpful accessories provided by Ken Merrifield. Images stacked using Helicon software.

Once the photographs were taken, I was able to work more quickly through the stages of illustration. First sketching out the features, making notes on which reference images I used and where others or microscope observations might be necessary to fill in obscure details. Inking up then follows – going over the pencil with a bold ink line – making notes about symmetry and where to tidy up. Still very much in the ‘rough’ stage I make a final scan of the drawing and get to work cleaning up the lines in photoshop ready for publication. In subsequent projects I tend to work straight to computer as it saves a lot of time, but I very much enjoyed the initial ‘old-fashioned’ pencil stage I used for these Craneflies.

*Selection of sketches and inked up drawing roughs.

I found it helpful to break the project into manageable sections and satisfying to tick them off as I worked my way through the list. I’m a fan of a list and when I spend my time in a black and white world, I do also like a bit of colour.

I was commissioned to illustrate the morphological section but not all the illustrations were needed in the end and the decision was taken to use Alan Stubbs’ original drawings for all but two in this portion of the book. Here are some of the morpho drawings depicting various structural characters of the body and wings.

T. selene vs T. peliostigma

Tipula pabulina set.

Tipula cava (Riedel, 1913), the perils of snappy legs! (My own specimen)

Male Epiphragma ocellare (Linnaeus, 1760), East Finchley Allotment 2014.

Resting female Tipula maxima (Poda, 1761) with accompanying resting Psychodidae sp. pond edge, East Finchley Allotment 2016. In conclusion, it was a thoroughly absorbing project to work on. I hope the plates I contributed to assist in the identification of these impressive diptera for many years to come. Somewhat typecast now (although not complaining), my current project is the rather elaborate genitalia of UK Dolichopodidae. Along with the more generalised morphological drawings of British Fairyflies – in the main, hymenopterists are far less concerned with genitalia as a means of identification so there will be more wings and antennae and body sculpture.

Ctenophora ornata (Wiedemann, 1818) painting commissioned by the Dipterists Forum for Alan Stubbs 2020.