Abby McBride is a freelance sketch biologist, science writer, and Fulbright-National Geographic Storytelling Fellow. She uses field sketching as a tool to explore global biodiversity, communicate about ecology and conservation, and help people connect to nature. More broadly, she works on a wide range of collaborative projects that bring together art, science, natural history, multimedia storytelling, and other methods and perspectives. Feel free to get in touch about possibilities such as art exhibitions, sketching workshops, or field-based collaborations. See original art and prints for sale. Sign up to receive occasional newsletters.
BIOGRAPHY
After studying biology at Williams College, Abby took the obvious next steps and worked on three farms in Spain, drew nature illustrations in New York City, manned the helm of a Maine lobster boat, bird-blogged across the western United States, researched siblicidal boobies on an uninhabited Galapagos island, coached swimming, taught piano lessons, helped revise an invasion ecology textbook, and worked as a pastry chef, in roughly that order.
Next she went to MIT for a graduate degree in science writing, wrote stories for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Bowdoin College, developed a communications program for the American Ornithological Society, sketched icebergs in Iceland, babblers in Borneo, and giraffes in Kenya, and somehow ended up traveling from Pisa to Budapest on a three-speed bicycle with a basket in front.
She spent the better part of a year living out of an old station wagon in New Zealand to sketch and write stories about the world’s fastest-declining group of birds, seabirds, for the National Geographic newsroom (as shown in the accompanying video courtesy of the Fulbright Program). More recently she has been drawing book illustrations, skating on Swedish ponds, and teaching sketching to geology and archaeology students.
Abby is based in downeast Maine. Her local work focuses on making connections between Wabanaki community members and coastal conservation organizations. See more projects.