Back to the Drawing Board

Something is amiss when illustrations of earthworms, caterpillars, and our mystery oatmeal bugs look suspiciously like a highly unusual case of inter-species identical triplets!





In recent days, we have spent a lot of time on scientific illustrations. Scientists use drawings to think about what they are studying and to communicate their observations to others. Without a visual arts class in our school, many children haven't received the drawing training and practice necessary for effective communication. We have "stick figure" caterpillars that are not distinctly different from worms. As far as communication goes, this amounts to a mumble.

I have been accused (by my own mother) of being unkind, expecting too much of the children, but I think this is just the right age to begin training the hand and eye for detailed illustration. Learning to look is a big part of creating accurate illustrations. Drawing something, recording its lines and forms on paper, requires careful observation. An infinite cycle—careful observation improves one's drawings and detailed drawing demands careful observation. So despite accusations of meanness, we were back at the drawing board.

We began again by brainstorming a list of criteria that define an effective scientific illustration:

Realistic
Sometimes bigger than life so you can see the parts
Detailed
—shows every part of the body
—accurately shows where the parts are in relationship to each other
Includes labels for the parts
Might have some enlarged sections in small windows on the page (to show more details or a different view)

Soon, we were busy examining and illustrating our classroom critters.




When you get close to something and slow down enough to really pay attention, you start to wonder.




This morning, I gave a lesson to first graders on the parts of a leaf--a wonderful opportunity to reinforce scientific illustration! To create my illustration, we used a hand lens to carefully examine a sprig of mint from our garden. "What do you notice?" Gradually, the children noticed more: the toothed leaf margin, the tiny buds at the base of each petiole, the tiny hairs on the midrib, the purplish color of the stem near every node . . . Finally one child pointed out the veins, explaining that they were very much like our own veins and hypothesizing that they bring water to the leaves.
"How do you think we could test to see if that's true?" "Put it in some water." "Hmm. But how will we be able to see what's happening?" "Oh, I know! We could put some color in the water! Maybe red." "Why would you choose red?" "Red is my favorite color." Of course, but this is a bright first grader. So I pushed, "What if I wanted to use green?" "The veins are already green and that would camouflage with the leaf." Ah, ha!