I have decided to take the edX course "Drawing Nature, Science, and Culture: Natural History Illustration 101" through the University of Newcastle for GT ELS this semester. The first week's worth of content was focused on establishing the foundations and importance of Natural History Illustration as well as giving examples of famous Australian Natural History Illustrators.
Natural History Illustration is an ancient practice that has been used since the beginning of humans' existence on Earth in order to document the natural world. This documentation of life has served an important function in scientific research over time because of the attention to detail of more recent Natural History Illustrations. Famously, many renaissance thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci used both Natural History Illustration and scientific research together in order to advance their understanding of the natural world to a greater degree.
Today, there are two prevailing styles of Natural History Illustration. Ecological style illustrations focus on showing subjects in context, often drawing or painting the setting in which their subject can be found. These illustrations usually contain multiple specimens even if they are focused on only one. The other style of Natural History Illustration, Linnean style is inspired by the German illustrator Georg Ehret who worked with Linneus to classify specimens. Ehret's style was geared towards helping researchers and displayed usually just one subject, often with parts magnified to show them in greater detail.
At our next meeting we need to look at the text and the format of this post.
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