Illustrations In Science – A Marriage Of Art and Science

A visual depiction, to simplify the understanding of any written document, in the form of a sketch, picture or any other art form, is known as Illustration. A very simple truth of life that the visual impact is much more than the audio impact is the driving force, behind the importance of having illustrations. The advancement of age along with the help of computers, has taught man to illustrate using different mediums, including the computer soft wares. These illustrations vary from being two dimensional to even three dimensional.

The purpose of these illustrations is best employed to understand the difficult concepts of science. Though it is an extremely painstaking process of combining art and science, yet to meet the demands of educating, conveying the message, or even advertising, the scientific and technical illustrators, take up the task of creating the illustrations.

Barbara Schoeberl , is one animator, who creates magnificent illustrations and animations and specialises in geological illustrations, to bring a more accurate and intimate picture of the earth’s processes to her audiences. Her Animated Earth LLC, gives its audiences a chance to learn through fun and games, which act as an interface to educate about the earth sciences.

A very noteworthy thing about any illustration is that, it depicts any amount of writing in just one or two drawings. This helps in keeping the focus of the learner intact, who usually gets bored seeing the countless written pages of a book.

Barbara Schoeberl , developed on this criteria and thought it wise to present the geological conditions of the earth in a more prominent manner, where even if the learners do not go through a particular text, it does matter. She, in fact has used this technique of illustration along with her passion for natural photography. She captures the beauty of nature and then illustrates them in her marvellous sketches. She says that the more she learns about the beauty of nature the more is the urge in her to protect her beauteous environment. Her aim in combining science, photography and illustration is to present before all, the need to appreciate, the world in which we live.

Most people are aware of the fact that children are imitative in nature. This enforces the truth that they learn better what they see, and hence this is the reason, illustrations should be made available to anyone, at the onset of their learning process. This learning process carries on for life, and becomes extremely helpful while learning the various sciences.

The science of the Earth is also best comprehended with these illustrations and animations. The real processes happening in the different spheres of the earth- air, water, land and life can be represented by these illustrations, to the point that they seem almost real.

Right from the biology and physics classes in school, it is not hard to realise, how much more marks were obtained if a pictorial depiction was given to support the answers. This is evidence enough to prove that science has always depended on illustration, for its complete understanding.

Illustrations no doubt have been a lifelong partner of science, simply because of the strength of illustrations to show details which might otherwise be missed out by reading texts alone.