First Step Of the Road to Scientific Illustrations
Complete the questions below in your do now portfolio.
About Scientific Illustrations
Scientific Illustrations
Illustrated books allowed the lay public to share in the excitement of discoveries, from Antarctica to the Amazon, from the largest life forms to the microscopic.
"In the days before photography and printing, original art was the only way to capture the likeness of organisms, people, and places, and therefore the only way to share this information with others," notes Tom Baione, "Printed reproductions of art about natural history enabled many who'd never seen an octopus, for example, to try to begin to understand what an octopus looked like and how its unusual features might function." Today, scientists use many imaging technologies to conduct research: infrared photography, scanning electron microscopes, computed tomography (CT) scanners, and more, but there still Is a role for illustration--how else to depict animals that cannot be seen live, such as a fleshed-out dinosaur? Illustration also is used to represent complex structures clearly, color graduations, and other essential details. |
Prominent amongst the history of Scientific Illustratiosn/ natuiralist paintings is Dürer’s Drawing and how, so-to-speak, he brought the rhinoceros to the continent of Europe:
Rhinos were by no means common to Europe; not many people, aside from those who had traveled and seen a rhino in its native lands had ever known what one looked like. And so on May 20, 1515, the first living rhinoceros to be brought to Europe in 1,200 years was scheduled to arrive in Portugal as a present by the Portuguese King, Manuel I, on behalf of Sultan Muzafar II of the kingdom of Gujarat in western India to Pope Leo X. Unfortunately, the animal, along with the ships crew, perished in a shipwreck. Dürer therefore never saw the animal, but instead used a sketch made by another artist and a letter from Lisbon, which provided a detailed description of the scientific make-up of the rhino, as models for the woodcut image he would eventually produce. Dürer’s image was naturalistic enough to identify that particular rhino as one of Indian descent (single-horned and possessing folded skin unlike African double-horned, smooth-skinned rhinos), though it did receive some speculation due to the small spiral horn located on the shoulders, which has been referred to as the “Dürer-hornlet.” The image was heavily copied and found its way into a multitude of learning tools including zoological, artistic and scientific texts well into the 18th century. After Reading the passage above Answer the questions below |
Project discription
Traditional Scientific IllustrationsExamples of Digital painted Birds |
Like Durer students will create a scientific illustration examining the detail of their chosen BUG subject but using the modern amendities of our time. Photoshop.
The painting must
Step one: create a original composition by collaging together your image
1) decided on the bird you want to illustrate
2) find a high res pic of that bird 3 find high res pic of its environment and any other material that can illustrate something about their life 4) cut and paste all things into one file in Photoshop 
Step twoUsing your digital painting knowledge illustrate your composition. you must have a reference picture ie the original to work with. Otherwise you are just making information up (colors, shadows, markings etc) and is it really a scientific Illustration
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project Requirements
like Durer students will create a scientific illustration examining the detail of their chosen BUG subject but using the modern amenities of our time. Photoshop.
The painting must
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Rubric |
Tutorials
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