#46: Not a Place, But a Feeling.

The challenge is in finding the medium, or media, that best fits the narrative you want to share.

“If you've got a story you want to get out there and you've got a really good image
…it will fly a lot farther than just words.”¹

Scrolling through the latest entries on the #SciArt hashtag and related Twitter community, I’ve often wondered about the place of the scientific illustration.

Specifically, in a world where we can - and do - document with digital cameras every moment in startlingly accurate detail, how has the illustration persisted as a medium of science communication?

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Nearly twenty, and looking for respite from the anxiety that nagged at me, I spent a term of Tuesday nights in the depths of an elementary school basement. Rubbing elbows with retirees, we sipped on acrid caffeine from Styrofoam cups, and nibbled on tiny sugary biscuits. The insistant fumes of paint thinner and instant coffee draped our hunched-over forms, scraping pigment and resin onto canvas boards. Learning the building blocks of oil painting.

Over that winter and spring, I tried to recreate a moody seascape I had torn from one of the magazines in a back corner of the classroom. I hadn’t found my inner Bob Ross, though. I was an unforgiving perfectionist at that age (still recovering, if I’m being honest), and the end result never captured the depth and dramatic light of the stormy purple cliffs and ocean.

Emerging from the DC Metro at Dupont Circle, June 2019. The architecture of their underground was a photographer’s playground.

A few years later, I picked up a camera, and something clicked.² Crouching behind the viewfinder, I could suddenly convey more honesty and truth with light painting a sensor through a lens, than with brush strokes on canvas, or pencil on paper. And, I had the benefit of easy practice and immediate feedback. The first image is rubbish? Try again, and take ten more. You didn’t have all the preparatory steps that setting up paintings can take.

Of course, the difference was that all that practice was teaching me how to actually look at the world. To see composition, colour, and shape. To look at the way the light bends and curves, and make adjustments.

Perhaps most importantly, it was learning to let go - to not make the art “precious”. Once you’ve decided you’re creating a masterpiece, you work stiffly, already in editorial mode and not creating mode.

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Continuing my own art journey, I’ve recently come back full circle to the role of illustration versus the photograph. Given the ease of creating an image with a camera, why does science lean on illustration for its’ textbooks, pamphlets and videos?

Some argue that illustrations are preferred in science for their abilty to represent the truth more accurately; for example, precise details may not stand out or have enough contrast in a photograph³ due to a camera's hardware limits. Illustrations can have greater longevity⁴, too, not constrained by stock photography models' dated outfits or surrounding decor. These seem like weak arguments to me, though, especially as cameras, lenses, sensors, and editing software continue to improve.

What I think it comes back to is a lesson I learned a few summers ago, during a drop-in figure drawing class at the Smithsonian.⁵ I was in DC for a week playing tourist while Ben attended computer camp⁶, and how cool would it be to go to the Smithsonian and take an art class?!

Sitting in the Smithsonian Art and Portrait Gallery, learning more about poses and figure drawing, June 2019.

The instructor (yellow sweater standing up front) gave wonderful nuggets to help us be more loose in our sketches, including, “You’re not making a carbon copy. You need to communicate the essence of our model.”

It was a lot of fun, once you learned to let go. I mean, a sketch every minute or two is nuts - but it stops you thinking! June, 2019.

What’s the essence of a science story? And, depending on the medium’s ability to tell the story⁷ we need it to tell, is the photograph or illustration better in this case?

Although comparable, a photo and a painting should not be compared when it comes to art. Because each one of us wants a different story. Some find that in a photo and some in a painting. None is better than the other, because they both are talking to us, by evoking memories and by telling us stories.⁸

In short, the illustration persists because it tells the story we need it to tell in that textbook, or that slidedeck.

A feeling, not a place.

No precious art here. Kraft paper and acrylics, February 2023.

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1. Madhusoodanan, J. Science illustration: Picture perfect. Nature 534, 285–287 (2016).

2. Pun absolutely intended.

3. Perelli K. (6 Mar 2019.) Why We Need Scientific Illustrations.

4. Losers G. (5 Oct 2016). 10 Reasons to Use Illustrations Instead of Stock Photography in Learning.

5. Yes, I know. Lah-dee-dah.

6. More specifically, SANS, which teaches you how to hack and defend against hackers. He sat in a hotel conference room for six 12 hour days, I walked around DC, scoured used vinyl shops and ate cupcakes. We both won.

7. And if you’re Canadian and of a certain age, you’ll remember good ol’ Marshall from that Heritage Minute.

8. No author. (27 Feb 2022). Which is better: A photo or a painting?