"What is Scratchboard? How do they get so much detail? I've never heard of carbon dust, but I really like it! I would never have the patience to do this. It is just like a photograph, only better! Just keep looking, you will find more animals and different plants! How do they get that texture?"
>Image: Rock Crab by S. Landry
The AOI Illustration Awards are the most comprehensive and highest profile illustration awards based in the UK. The AOI Illustration Awards will promote exceptional work by illustrators and present illustration as a major force in global visual culture. The awards are international and open to illustrators worldwide working across all sectors and in any medium.
I hope GNSI has taught you few things from traditional watercolor techniques to business practices to how to turn a roadkill into a clean specimen. Now it’s time for you to tell GNSI your thoughts.
The GNSI board is always dedicated to bringing you the best services, tools, and opportunities for professional and scholarly development to promote a better understanding of the field of scientific illustration. I’m hoping you will give us some advice and share some of your background, interests, and expertise. The GNSI members generally tell us that they like the offerings from the group, but we need to make sure that we are really on target with what you want and need from GNSI.
GNSI is proud to announce we have arranged for Science-Art.Com (our commercial arm) to offer a newly expanded marketing program for freelancing science artists!
The program will consist of many marketing tools worth over $3200, including a custom Science Art catalog that will be published in October 2013, but we have worked hard to get the maximum value: the price is set at $1625!
Two Portuguese paleontologists - Rui Araujo and Ricardo Castanhinha - whose work was partially supported by a National Geographic Society grant, have excavated in Mozambique searching for Permian fossils since 2009. Their findings wrote a new page in the earth history book and have allowed a better understanding of mammalian ancestors' evolution journey. Portuguese Editor, Gonçalo Pereira, once again challenged illustrator Fernando Correia to recreate a paleontological scene, this one regarding the Permian period, and based on the available fossil records. Following a traditional workflow, the researchers, the illustrator, and Art Director Vasco Martins worked closely together in order to achieve the best visual approach and, simultaneously, the necessary credibility and scientific accuracy.
The main directive and emphatic vectors were: a slightly hilly horizon, a lake (similar to present-day Niassa Lake), and a typical Permian phyto community in the background; in the foreground, three animals already identified and described (left, a Gorgonopsian; middle, a Temnospondyl; right, a Dicynodon), near a shallow stream. The result was a double page illustration that opens the article published in this February's issue of National Geographic - Portugal.
In The Unfeathered Bird, Katrina van Grouw offers a unique treatise on bird anatomy that should be in every natural history illustrator’s library. Unique because she portrays her subjects in lifelike poses and includes examples from many bird orders and families -- two features most welcome to those with an interest in birds. Too, Katrina’s illustrations are superb and easily fulfill her wish to show anatomy, not describe it in an excruciatingly detailed text.
Katrina has been a self-employed artist, illustrator, and printmaker since earning, in 1992, a Master of Arts in Natural History illustration from the Royal College of Art. Her thesis was an illustrated treatise on bird anatomy, designed to aid artists in producing life-like drawings and paintings. So was born the idea for The Unfeathered Bird, a project which is, to date, a life work. She has also served as curator for the ornithological collections at the British Natural History Museum in London, a post which has provided the contacts she needed to continue her work.
Nature's Patchwork Quilt: Understanding HabitatsJust imagine all of nature, mountains, prairies, oceans, and all lying on your bed as a patchwork quilt! Take flora and fauna in their unique habitats, fold them up and you have a book, this book. Downloadable activities for this book can be found on the Dawn Publications website.
The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators is proud to announce that we can now take offers for Presentations and Workshops at the 2013 Annual Conference directly on the web. Thanks to Board member Ikumi Kayama, we now have a sophisticated submission form that should cover all the bases in preparing you to participate in the Conference. Workshops, short and long presentations, panel discussions, and more! Soon we hope to have the Exhibit submission forms online as well.
Consider joining us in Bar Harbor, Maine, July 7-13, 2013 and share your knowledge with an enthusiastic group of artists.
GNSI-DC had a wonderful send-off for 2012 with a well-attended holiday gathering at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History on Dec. 18th.
It was a pleasure to see old friends, and new faces interested in Science Illustration.
Attendees brought friends and family to join in the fun.
In 1762 in the Netherlands, Johannes Fredericus Gronovius published The Flora of Virginia, based on an herbarium of John Clayton from Gloucester, VA. Now, 250 years later, a revised hardcopy version is available, and a digital version is being developed.
The Flora Of Virginia Project Foundation is an effort by the Virginia Native Plant Society, whose mission is the conservation of wild flowers and wild places. GNSI member and freelance illustrator Nicky Staunton has been a Charter member of the Society since 1982; she furnishes line drawings for the Society's newsletter and participated in the plant inventory of the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Woodbridge VA (700+ species, using four floras of neighboring states).
The New England Chapter of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators held an exhibition of work entitled " A Closer Look: Guild of Natural Science Illustrators New England chapter recent works" at the South Shore Nature Center, Norwell, Massachusetts.
The GNSI Great Lakes Chapter invites all GNSI members residing in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan to join their exhibit at the Fernwood Botanical Garden in Niles, Michigan. The title of the exhibit is Great Lakes Chapter of the Guild of Natural Scientific Illustrators Exhibit: Spring Botanicals.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JANUARY 14, 2013
LOCATION: Fernwood Botanical Gardens, Niles, MI
EXHIBIT DATES: February 28 -April 14, 2013
OPENING RECEPTION: Sunday, March 3, 3:30-5:50 pm
The ASBA (American Society of Botanical Illustrators) recognizes artists who have made significant contributions to science through botanical art. These artist’s work must meet the requirements of scientific accuracy, technical proficiency, and aesthetics. In addition, the artist must have compiled a body of work that shows significant accomplishment in the field of scientific illustration. The recipient of this year’s biennial award, “ASBA Botanical Illustrator Award for Excellence in Scientific Botanical Art”, is our very own Marjorie Leggitt, Treasurer of the GNSI.
Marjorie has been a GNSI member since 1979 and a member of the ASBA since 2002. Although she considers herself an all-around “scientific illustrator”, much of her scientific art has been botanical in nature. As a college student in 1974, she began working in the field with her botany professor, Dr. Jack Carter. Their efforts resulted in the fully illustrated Trees and Shrubs of Colorado, a publication that is still in print. Since 1990, Marjorie has taught pen and ink, composition, perspective and various other classes in the Denver Botanic Gardens Botanical Art and Illustration Certificate Program. Also in 1990, Marjorie began an ongoing collaboration with paleobotanists working as research artist and illustrator of prehistoric exhibits and professional papers. Today, Marjorie is a lead artist of the Flora of North America Magnoliophyta Vol 13 tome, having worked on volumes 9, 19, 20, and 21.
Youth worldwide 10-18 years old are invited to learn about space exploration and express their view of "How will humans use science and technology to explore space, and what mysteries will we uncover?" through musical, visual, literary, or video artwork. The competition is open now through October 21, 2012.
Winning artists will be awarded and the winning artwork will be woven into multimedia displays and performances aired at numerous venues worldwide, including the 19th Humans in Space Symposium in Cologne, Germany, hosted by the German Space Agency, and various US sites associated with NASA's "50 years of Solar System Exploration" Celebration from August 2013-August 2014. The artwork will also be viewable worldwide in an online gallery.
The website Science Art-Nature has posted a Call For Entries for a virtual art exhibit entitled Window On Evolution: An Artistic Celebration of Charles Darwin, commemorating Darwin Day, February 12, 2013. Each selected piece of art must portray a narrative about evolution. Visit the Science Art-Nature website for the entry form and detailed information.
Congratulations to GNSI member Linda Feltner for both a people's choice arward at the GNSI Members Exhibit this past summer and now two new awards for the same image! Linda has received "The Ethology award for the Best Depiction of Natural Behavior in Any Medium" and the "Western Art Collector's Magazine Editor's Choice Award" from the Society of Animal Artists (SAA), for "A Mischief of Jays".
Linda's image is a 20 x 24 pastel created as part of an ongoing series of animals, plants, and environment of the Sky Island Ecosystems in southeast Arizona.
Exhibits dates and location:
April 19-June 7, 2013
Atrium Art Gallery, University of Southern Maine, Lewiston-Auburn College
51 Westminster Street, Lewiston, Maine 04240
Call-for-Entries
An all media exhibit on artistic interpretations of pollination including flowering plants, pollinators, and the lively environment they intersect. Related topics can include seeds, flower anatomy, pollen grains, chemistry, genetics, and other areas that relate to the pollination process. Pollen vectors (pollinators) can include native bees such as orchard mason bees, miner bees, and bumblebees, beetles, flies (syrphid flies, hoverflies, etc), honey bees, butterflies, moths, wasps, and hummingbirds.
The Program Committee of the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) invites potential presenters to submit presentation abstracts for our next annual meeting, which will be held in Salt Lake City from July 17-20, 2013.
Submission Deadline: November 30, 2012
Taina Litwak, a long time GNSI member and past GNSI president, is featured in the Science Friday blog by Annette Heist. This interview led to another, in Science News.
Taina is both a biological and medical illustrator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Systematic Entomology Lab. The image here is of the beetle Licracantha formicaria, a newly discovered species of ant mimic wood-boring beetle illustrated for Dr. Steve Lingafelter.
It’s been said that unless one studies the structure of birds, one will never really portray them well. This is especially true for birds, for they are cloaked in a soft covering that conceals most of their anatomy. The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds is a book that will guide the new or experienced bird artist with an in-depth approach to drawing birds.
There is a certain fear factor facing the novice bird artist. Birds have shape and form that demonstrate light and shadow, which are apparent from viewing the outside. Artists must also study and investigate what goes on underneath the feathers, how the feathers attach, and how all of this benefits flight.
