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Instructors: Raymond Bonilla, Cassandra Kim, & John English
Program
Mentorship
All Skill Levels
Networking opportunities, finding gallery representation, and learning how to sell your art is the backbone of this course.
Length: 3 courses, 10 weeks each
Instructors: Ray Bonilla, Cassandra Kim, & John English
Gallery Arts
Mentorship
Beginner
Equip yourself with tools and skills to build a career and thrive as a working fine artist.
Length: 10 Weeks
Instructors: Ray Bonilla, Cassandra Kim, & John English
Gallery Arts
Mentorship
Intermediate/advanced
Networking opportunities, finding gallery representation, and learning how to sell your art is the backbone of this course.
Length: 10 Weeks
Instructors: Adam Gustavson, Ashly Lovett, John English, Dale Stephanos, and more.
Program
Mentorship
All Skill Levels
Networking opportunities, finding gallery representation, and learning how to sell your art is the backbone of this course.
Length: 3 courses, 10 weeks each
Instructor: Adam Gustavson
Illustration
Mentorship
Beginner
Establish fundamental skills for advanced drawing and painting techniques for various visual arts industries.
Length: 10 weeks
Instructor: John English
Illustration
Workshop
All Skill Levels
Learn and master the steps to drawing the human form with confidence, skill, & expression
Length: 3 Weeks
Instructor: Ashly Lovett
Illustration
Mentorship
intermediate
Develop a process for creating compelling and engaging original stories, a critical component of visual narrative.
Length: 10 Weeks
Instructors: Dale Stephanos & John English
Illustration
Workshop
Advanced
Build your portfolio, identify your dream illustration clients, and pursue a career doing what you love.
Length: 10 Weeks
Instructor: Edward Kinsella
Illustration
Workshop
All Skill Levels
Design & illustrate impactful cover art for films, posters, books, and albums
Length: 5 weeks
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Scientific illustration is the art of visually communicating scientific concepts, data, and information. The history of scientific illustration is tightly bound with art history as many of our early artistic heroes were also breaking new scientific ground – consider the technical anatomical and mechanical drawings of da Vinci. He and other renaissance artists used drawing as a tool to understand and document the world around them.
Leonardo da Vinci, anatomical sketches
The earliest “scientific” drawings were produced in the middle ages, in bestiaries (studies of animals – real or mythological, often with accompanying biblical moralizing) and herbaria (studies of plants). Herbaria could be collections of real pressed and dried plants, or observational drawings.
Tractatus de Herbis written in Italy in 1440, describes medicinal plants.
These stylized illustrations carefully represent details of construction which can be used to identify plants. Scientific illustration is an artful balance between representation and simplification – the artist selects important details to include while flattening shapes so the viewer can easily interpret form.
Tractatus de Herbis (1440)
Physician and botanist Otto Brunfels wrote the first book on medicinal plants between 1530 and 1536, the Herbarum vivae eicones. Illustrated by Hans Weiditz, this book took advantage of movable type and engraving to disseminate information at scale.
Otto Brunfels and Hans Weiditz, Herbarum vivae eicones, 1530-1536
My favorite scientist/artist of this period is the german printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer (1471-1538). Like his contemporaries, Durer made a lot of religious iconography to pay the bills, but I love his observational studies of nature best. These 500 year old works of art still feel so fresh and modern.
Albrecht Dürer, Hase, 1502
Albrecht Dürer, Study of a Lily, 1526
Albrecht Dürer, 1512
Albrecht Dürer, Stag Beetle, 1505
Dürer was also a master of printmaking, and a quick google will take you down a rabbit hole of religious iconography. If that’s your jam, but all means, google away. I’m just going to share his depiction of a rhinoceros, which he created from a written description and a sketch by another artist without ever seeing the animal in person.
Albrecht Dürer, Rhinoceros, 1515
Dürer collaborated with astronomer Johannes Stabius with whom he created the first globe, as well as star charts and observations of celestial bodies in the night sky. He also published some of the first books of observation of human proportion.
Albrecht Dürer, Four Books on Human Proportion (Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion), 1528
To close, although not a scientific drawing, I can’t write about Dürer without mentioning a work known to tattoo artists and collectors the world over: the Praying Hands. This is probably one of the most widely reproduced works of art ever and I’d wager most people who have seen this image don’t know its origins.
Albrecht Dürer, Praying Hands, 1508
Dürer and other artists of the renaissance were the earliest naturalists, observing and lovingly representing the world around them. Five centuries ago, simple observations of nature and the human body were at the cutting edge of scientific communication. Today, cutting edge scientific drawings may skew more toward depicting tiny cellular processes, distant galactic space and time, or conceptualizing difficult physical and chemical processes. No matter the subject or time period, illustration is communication, and Dürer was a beautiful communicator of the natural world.
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