Drawing from Nature: The Art of Science

Last week, I attended the Desert Research Institute 2024 Nevada STEAM Conference in partnership with the Nevada Museum of Art. I listened to a wonderful lecture exploring the intersections of scientific illustration and ecology with artist and scientist Tiffany Pereira from the Desert Research Institute. She explained how to connect art and science by bringing scientific illustration and creative processes into our classrooms and lives through nature journaling. Recap of highlights that I learned from her talk.

When it comes to communication, its something that plagues scientists. A lot of times, they struggle on how to take information that is full of jargon and relay it to a wider audience in a way that will encourage the public to engage, and encourage them to care.

Why not use the universal language, which is art, and this is where scientific illustration comes in.

Scientific illustration as a discipline is not new by any means. Back in the day, researchers didn’t have fancy graphic software or any modern tools to convey their findings to a broader audience. So a lot of times, scientists had to be artists themselves, or they relied on artists to reproduce their findings to send them out around the world.

Art was instrumental and imperative to large scientific breakthroughs during the Renaissance. Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, John James Audubon were all scientists and artists themselves. Their discoveries were propelled by art, and used art to replay information and findings so that other researches could build upon their work.

We called that the Golden Age of Scientific Illustration. It sparked curiosity, exploration, and experimentation. And not just amongst the researches and scientists, but also the public who didn’t have the opportunity to hop on a plane and go take a look at these species being discovered around the world and talked about. They had to rely on what was being produced.

Here is an illustrated color depiction of the Tasmanian Tiger. The only photos that we have from life are in black and white. This species is now extinct as of 1936. So it is both photography and images like this in color that preserve species now for the people to see and appreciate.

When it comes to outreach in the modern era, we have to explain why science matters, not just how it works. Just repeatedly explaining something over and over again, or talking louder, will not make someone suddenly understand what you’re talking about.

To allow cross pollination, scientists can’t let their content sit in scientific journals or elite institutions. A way is needed to convey the information to a larger audience, and that’s where art comes in. And in most people’s cases who are not scientists, this is where nature journaling comes in.