Researching an artist

Researching the work of other artists... Scientific Drawing. 

For a City & Guilds in 'Creative Techniques; Drawing and Painting', I must review the work of other artists. One new, one old - a contemporary artists and an old master. Here I am going to take a very quick look at two scientific artists.


I have always loved the coming together of Art and Science, so my choice for a contemporary artist in the UK has to be this one: Katrina van Grouw. She was the curator for the Natural History Museum collections, not in Kensington, London, where the museum itself is situated, but in Buckinghamshire where the great stores of collections are kept. What a great job to have had!

I was very fortunate. Katrina came to Norwich Castle Museum to give a talk about her work as part of an exhibition "The Wonder of Birds" in 2014. I bought a copy of her book, of course.

Here is a link to the Exhibition from the Norfolk Museums Service: The Wonder of Birds.

And, here is a link to a website for Katrina van Grouw's book: The Unfeathered Bird.

Her book is a beautiful book. The illustrations are reproduced very carefully onto coloured paper. I believe the original drawings were produced on typical white paper but she chose to have them reproduced in this new colour tint to give an antique appearance. In fact, she explained the publisher found it easier to have the sheets printed with a background colour first, before the final printing, rather than to use a coloured paper. The authentic colour would be graphite on white, but not so easy on the eye as the sepia tint, an extra expense in the publishing that I think must have been well worth it.

Katrina when to great lengths to explain how she prepared her skeletons for drawing. Each drawing is produced from a real specimen, each one carefully prepared by herself in a long process of de-fleshing and cleaning the bones before reassembling them into a life-like pose. A lot of work - and not to everyone's pleasure! Few people want to have stewing bones strewn around their house!!!


There is, of course, one other scientific ornithological artist, world renowned, who also worked in another era, directly from collected specimens, each one posed in a life-like position for the purpose of a drawing; John James Audubon, (1785 - 1851).

Audubon was the first person to make a systematic survey of all the birds, and later all the mammals, of North America, reproducing each one, in a life-size, life-like pose in a book of 435 water-coloured drawings. His preparation may not have been quite so careful as Katrina van Grouw's. Audubon used specimens he shot himself, mounted onto wires to hold their position. These lasted only just long enough to produce the drawings before decomposition set in. Katrina's skeletal specimens are mounted and preserved.

Each drawing may then have been reproduced in a great folio, as a hand-coloured lithograph. Accuracy and clarity were of great importance in this type of drawing, so, Audubon's use of naturalistic poses and backgrounds is also rather ground-breaking for a scientific taxonomic work.

Audubon's illustrations can be seen here: Birds of America.

Stick and Stones

Stick and Stones and Bones and Ink and things...

Drawing in the Pyrenees in Spain, with the Artists for Nature Foundation in 2002, my wildlife art hero, Robert Bateman once said; "I found this stick. It is not an outstanding stick! It is just any old stick and broke it off. I've done this before. I often..., I don't bring a pen. I just wait until I see what is around to draw with and you get these happy accidents so that I move the stick around I not ever sure if it is going to be three lines, or one line, or a smudge, or I could rub areas with it, but the point is it is varied and surprising." He also says; "A great teacher once said in order to learn how to draw you have to make at least ten thousand mistakes. Get busy and start making them!"


It has been a little while, now. I need to get back into my drawing. So, I need to go make some mistakes! What better way to do that, than to draw with a stick and a stone. So unpredictable, might provide a surprise or two. So here goes... drawing without traditional materials, no pen, no pencil, no brush...


Something interesting to draw... a few days ago, I popped into my local museum, the Castle Museum Norwich, to take some snaps of bones in the natural history department. A fossil skull of a thunder-bird (an extinct giant) and  a skull of a polar bear caught my eye. I printed out the photos in black & white.

Today, I selected from my garden some natural materials to draw with; a dry stick, some pebbles, some dry birch bark  and soft wood I'd collected some time ago from Mousehold Health, even some egg shells saved from the kitchen.

The question... do I try some mark-making first to see how these will work with some black ink? Or, do I go for the varied and surprising approach. Of course, I want to get straight into it.

My first drawing looks a little tentative to me. An outline drawn with stick. A few smudges and varied marks with bark. But basically a line-drawing...

Time for another go. This time, I gone straight into some darks by putting in a black background. That will stop the appearance of an outline..!

This is definitely more tonal and more three-dimensional. It also looks more scary! Or do I mean gory? Proportions are not perfect but then this is a free-hand drawing, so that's okay. Big teeth. It is definitely a monster!

Over all, I am quite pleased. I will certainly try this technique again. It should be a great technique for some field sketching. I may look for more varied natural materials to work with... a pine cone, sponge, feathers, those egg shells I didn't use. Or perhaps, I should just wait to look around to see what to draw with, just as Robert Bateman would do.


A final thought - one for the future. I have seen similar ideas in books, using charcoal instead of manufactured ink. As a dry powdery material, I would guess a stick or a stone would be less effective than something softer, say a finger-tip, a bundle of grass, feathers, just something to smudge. Perhaps a hard or sharp tool could be used to scratch away an image from the smudged charcoal. And of course, charcoal comes as a ready made stick for lines.