Reflection on Kris Kirkeby’s, Scientific Illustrator, Presentation and Activity
Image from Scientific Illustration tumblr
A) It was sad to hear how computers have virtually closed another door to a unique career. Kirkeby related how she does not see much work for manual scientific illustration anywhere, and that there are no, or virtually no, in-house scientific illustrator positions at publishing houses or museums any longer. I’ve seen a hundreds, if not thousands, of diagrams in textbooks over the years. The computer generated graphics are no where near as engaging. At first, I could not think of a reason why. One would think that the graphics increased ability to convey accurate information would make them more desirable, but Kirkeby showed us that scientific illustrators have been producing scientifically accurate, precise drawings for centuries. So it is not the level of accuracy that is different. I believe the difference is fully psychological and comes back to the fact that the colors laid down by a physical hand are more nuanced and varied than what a computer program is capable of producing. I also believe that viewers do not feel as connected with computer generated imagery because when they imagine the image’s creation, they do not picture the person behind the computer manipulating it. Conversely, it is difficult to image a carefully rendered, wonderfully wrought drawing without at the same time seeing the hands holding the drawing tools that birthed it and the focused visage of its maker.
B) The only direct link I saw between what was presented and what I am studying this term is that both Kirkeby and Simpson do all their work as freelance artists. I suspect that more jobs will take that turn, as computers become more powerful and as the type of work that is done becomes more technical. Owing to the fact that my project is now virtually complete, there is nothing that immediately comes to mind about how to specifically apply what was discussed to my own work and research. The main point of the presentation, concerning the role of the scientific illustrator, however, will be of use to me moving onward. It has made me see the value in multidisciplinary approaches to tasks. These images simply would not be able to exist if the illustrators did not understand the nuance of what they were drawing. Had I taken a different approach to my project, and found myself creating a painting or a drawing, the advice to fully seek out information about the related science would’ve profoundly resonated. In fact, I suspect that if I had taken that route, I would have been pushed to more deeply understand how nurse logs interact with the whole forest, in order to convey those ideas visually.
C) In terms of my own life, I have always appreciated hand-drawn images that closely remembered nature, and secretly hope that that sort of art will make a resurgence, in opposition to the tech-obsessed everyday world. The sort of attention to detail that is cultivated when one is trying to copy exactly what one sees in front of them is no useless skill. It is easy to assume that everything is simple and explained in a world where we can search for virtually any topic and receive millions of hits. Go try to exactly draw a tree and you will quickly see how thin this veil of simplicity is. Everything has not been discovered, everything has not been explained.
One realm where realistic, detail-obsessed drawing is still valued is in architectural delineation. Its amazing how an image that could easily be photographed takes on a whole different degree of being, when it is instead painstakingly rendered.
Image from Archinect
I suggest checking out this article on Life of An Architect.com for further images.