![]() ![]() A balance has to be found where there is enough light to see the specimen and yet, not so much light that the pencil can't be seen. Additionally, it is easier to see your pencil when drawing if the light on the specimen is minimal. Lighting is critical when using the drawing tube and it is helpful, if not necessary, to have a light source to the right of the drawing surface (for left handed people the drawing tube can be turned around to the other side of the microscope and in that case the light would be on the left). I use printer paper for the preliminary drawings and draw with an HB drawing pencil. The drawing paper is placed below the end of the tube, which is a mirror. There is some type of prism system mounted inside the tube that enables one to see the insect being drawn and the pencil and paper at the same time. They are relatively easy to use and a great aid in the drawing process. For generalized drawings of the whole body (called habitus drawings) I usually use a drawing tube, that is mounted on my stereomicroscope, a very nice Leica MZ16 (see picture below).ĭrawing tube attached to a Leica MZ16 stereomicroscopeĭrawing tubes are made specifically for a given brand of microscope and will not work on another scope. The drawing method depends on the size of the insect and whether or not it is a structure of an insect or an entire insect. There are several different ways to draw insects and they all involve the use of a microscope. ![]() If any taxonomic information is available, it is quite useful to read that as well, because if you know the most important characteristics of the species being drawn, you can emphasize them. I have also done some botanical illustrations, but careful study still applies. This is ideal for showing light hairs against a dark background or other similar features.Īll drawings start the same way, by first carefully studying the specimen, which in my case, is generally an insect on a pin. Ink can be applied in much the same way as on other drawing surfaces, but the ink can also be scratched away, hence the name scratchboard. This is a versatile drawing surface that is coated with clay. Many people are familiar with pre-inked black scratchboard, but I use un-inked white scratchboard. My finished drawings are done with rapidograph pens (using a permanent waterproof ink also made by rapidograph) with various pen tip sizes on Essdee scraper board, a type of scratchboard (I order both my pens and scraper board from Dick Blick Art Supplies). The advantages of pen and ink is that is very durable, easily reproducible, and relatively inexpensive. I also occasionally do watercolor paintings or mixed media with a combination of watercolor, colored pencil, ink, and sometimes professional markers. However, I generally use pen and ink on white scatchboard for my drawings. There is a wide variety of effective illustrative methods, such as pen and ink, water color, acrylic paint, pencil, carbon dust, colored pencil, mixed media, and even computer graphics, and they all have merit. I find it useful to employ a combination of both photography and illustrations to best achieve a given result. Close is interesting to me because his portraits feature grids as both subject and organizing principle.Scientific Illustration of Insects (according to Joe MacGown)Įven in this modern age of photography and numerous technological advances, scientific drawings are still useful and many times better illustrate scientific concepts than photographs. ![]() Chuck Close, in the documentary below, is probably one of the more accessible artists with work where grids feature prominently. That’s a pretty academic way of saying that grids emerged as a subject in painting only recently. Once artists embark upon their journey to true abstraction, the grid is more and more often the subject of art, representing the schism that appeared in the modern psyche around the turn of the 20th century. Krauss asserts that the grid emerges in modernist art just as other more worldly subjects are disappearing. And those two planes-the physical and the aesthetic-are demonstrated to be the same plane: coextensive, and, through the abscissas and ordinates of the grid, coordinate. The physical qualities of the surface, we could say, are mapped onto the aesthetic dimensions of the same surface. It is a transfer in which nothing changes place. Indeed, if it maps anything, it maps the surface of the painting itself. Unlike perspective, the grid does not map the space of a room or a landscape or a group of figures onto the surface of a painting. ![]() This essay by Rosiland Krauss is perhaps one of the most influential pieces of writing about the appearance of the grid in art as the subject of art rather than the underpinning of its creation. The grid has, over time, become a theme all by itself in art. ![]()
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