![]() My Moon sketching workshops, however, tend to be in more informal settings and act as of a form of public outreach. research, such as the recent Draw an Extremophile workshop that was presented in collaboration with 4thSPACE. Drawing sessions are integrated in the course Convergence: Arts, Neuroscience, and Society, as well as in my Ph.D. I fully concur!ĭrawing has been a fantastic tool for my own research and knowledge production, and it is also a method I introduce to my students when I am teaching art-science. Since the advent of digital imaging technology the practice of drawing at the microscope is becoming a lost art, but some, like artist Gemma Anderson in her brilliant book Drawing as a Way of Knowing in Art and Science, advocate for its continued practice. ![]() However, when I make a drawing, I can integrate several different focal points into one single image and produce a more complete representation of my subject. If you take a photo, only one focal range is visible at any one time. The three-dimensional organisms under scrutiny reveal different details depending on the microscope’s plane of view. The microscope’s focus needs to be constantly adjusted to allow for a complete view of the item on the slide. Drawing at the microscope is particularly useful because the instrument’s shallow depth of field offers limited views of the object being studied. Here, I am following the path of pioneers such as Spanish neurologist Santiago Ramon y Cajal and German zoologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, who made stunningly detailed drawings at the microscope as part of their scientific research. Much like drawing Moon craters, the practice of drawing at the microscope’s eyepiece helps me to more closely observe and understand the world of the imperceptibly small. There will be a photo and a post in ALL CAPS on my Twitter account when I spot one.) (I am still on the hunt for the elusive tardigrade. This little device magnifies up to 140x and I have used it to observe serrated dandelion seed pappus, murky river bed clay scraped off an anchor, and a hairy mite that was hiding in some lichen. The microscope also snaps to a phone, which allows me to use its digital zoom. I own a basic compound microscope, but I have recently discovered the more portable Foldscope, an ingenious folded paper microscope that integrates a single lens and a few magnetized adaptors. When skies are cloudy, I transition from observing the very large to observing the very small: I swap my telescope for my microscope. ![]() Perched on a folding chair in near-darkness, with a small flashlight dangling from my neck and the sketchbook balanced on my knees, I make my drawings as I make my observations. To make my observing sessions more comprehensive, I like to record the objects I’m viewing in a log book, though, more often than not, I also take a small sketchbook along with me. It is a stark, desolate landscape, devoid of any colour, splashed with dramatic, unforgiving shadows. Rugged crater fields, cleft mountain ranges, and sinewy rilles silently float through the eyepiece as the Earth turns underneath my feet. My 8” Dobsonian telescope transports me to the lunar surface and sends me floating over its desolate terrain. I can, however, easily spot the big, bright Moon. Since I live in Montreal’s Mile End, the light-polluted urban skies do not allow me to observe faint deep-sky objects like wispy nebulae or grainy globular star clusters. Aside from being a trained artist, I am also an avid amateur astronomer. The strategy of honing my observing skills through the practice of drawing is tied to my love of drawing at my telescope. ![]() In my own creative practice, and in my practice as an art educator, I use drawing to help me and my students to better observe, to comprehend, and to deeply engage with nature. Drawing can function as an anticipatory stage in idea development, a method of communicating complex ideas, a strategy for documenting information, or a mode of personal expression. In the book Writing on Drawing, artist and author Anita Taylor describes drawing as research, explaining that drawing can “enable us to discover through seeing-either through our own experience of seeing, observing and recording or through the shared experience of looking at another’s drawn record of an experience” (p.9). Scholars in the field of contemporary art consider drawing to be, at its core, a method of inquiry.
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