ArtPlantae Today

National Pollinator Week does more than bring attention to the transfer of pollen between flowers. It reminds us of the complex interactions between flora and fauna. By “fauna”, I don’t just mean non-human animals. Humans are part of the equation too, as I pointed out when sharing an article about dairy-farming during the Ask The Artist event with Mindy Lighthipe.

Children begin learning about organisms and their life cycles in kindergarten. One way to help children build an understanding of ecosystems is through drawing. The creation of a learning environment centered around drawing activities is the focus of Methods and Strategies: Using Drawing Strategically, an article by Shawn Glynn, a professor of educational psychology and science education, and K. Denise Muth, a professor of middle school education.

The drawing activities discussed in Glynn & Muth (2008) were developed during inservice teacher workshops. Each activity meets the National Science Education Standards required to understand organisms, their life cycles and their environment.

Glynn & Muth (2008) recommend implementing drawing activities in the life sciences (as well as other disciplines) because they are “hands-on and minds-on” and enable students to synthesize several layers of information.

Drawings also help teachers evaluate student understanding of content (Glynn & Muth, 2008). What students think they know about a topic becomes visible in a drawing. This enables teachers to assess what has been learned and to correct student misconceptions (Glynn & Muth, 2008).

For teachers utilizing drawing as a learning tool, Glynn & Muth (2008) recommend using a drawing activity as a pre-assessment tool because it will show a student’s prior knowledge about a subject. The same drawing activity should also be used as a post-assessment tool to check what has been learned (Glynn & Muth, 2008). The authors explain that teachers can assess what has been learned by evaluating the level of detail between pre- and post-drawings and the accuracy and depth of student notes accompanying each drawing.

Glynn & Muth (2008) bring attention to the following issues teachers should keep in mind when creating a drawing-centered program in the life sciences:

1. Students will take to drawing better if their teacher draws too.
2. When drawing for students, also refer to actual specimens, photos or videos.
3. Think aloud while drawing. Let students hear you think about an organism’s characteristics.
4. Remind students they are using drawing as a learning tool and that they will create several draft drawings, drawings that will change as their knowledge grows. Steer them clear of the notion that each drawing must be a final product.
5. Give students the option of choosing their own subjects. Glynn & Muth (2008) state students will choose their subjects based on their experiences with a subject. By choosing their own subjects, students will relate their prior knowledge to their current learning experiences.
6. Tell students their drawings will be used to teach other people. Glynn & Muth (2008) have observed that students tend to include more details if their drawings will be used to help other people learn.
7. Do not interrupt students while they are drawing, thinking and articulating their knowledge in a visual way. The errors you may feel compelled to point out can wait until later.
8. Colored pencils are better drawing tools than crayons.

Celebrate the Work of Young Natural Science Illustrators
Glynn & Muth (2008) believe that an “art-conducive classroom” is critical to the success of art-based programs. They recommend establishing a portfolio for each student, praising students about their artwork and new knowledge, and creating a gallery space for student exhibitions.

This article is available for purchase online for 99¢ from the National Science Teachers Association’s Learning Center.

Literature Cited
Glynn, Shawn and K. Denise Muth. 2008. Methods and strategies: using drawing strategically. Science and Children. Summer 2008. Pages: 48-51. [accessed 21 June 2011] <http://learningcenter.nsta.org/product_detail.aspx?id=10.2505/4/sc08_045_09_48>

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At the age of 60, biologist Maura Flannery decided to learn more about plants. She writes about her decision in Daring Botany, an article written for her Biology Today column in The American Biology Teacher. In this article, she discusses how botanical illustration and online databases about plants have helped to resolve her self-described “plant blindness” (Flannery, 2007).

Flannery is no stranger to the use of imagery in biology. One of her research specialties is the relationship between biology and art. So it was no surprise to learn she studied botanical illustration at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG). She has written about botanical illustration in previous articles (Flannery, 1995). What was different about this article was who she mentioned as the botanical artist whom she describes as her “role model” (Flannery, 2007).

Dr. Dick Rauh is a much-loved and respected botanist and botanical illustrator and is currently serving as President of the American Society of Botanical Artists. He teaches Plant Morphology at NYBG and at botanical gardens across the U.S. In her article, Flannery (2007) writes how Dr. Rauh taught her to see “how plants are put together”, how they work and how their morphological features vary between plant families. She writes how Dr. Rauh’s passion for plants made each of his students want to learn more about them.

Flannery describes her time at NYBG as a “humbling experience”, one marked with challenges in learning how to draw, learning how to draw plants, and “even learning (how) to hold a pencil correctly” (Flannery, 2007). Her experiences in botanical illustration made her appreciate the challenges of learning a subject with many layers of information and caused her to reflect on the challenges her own students face when learning new concepts in her classroom. Her studies at NYBG also trained her to “look more carefully at the green world” and instilled in her such a strong enthusiasm towards plants, Flannery (2007) made plants the focus of a class she taught later that year. Anyone who has learned from Dr. Rauh knows such a transformation is not an exaggeration. This story is great example of the power of effective storytelling and how botanical illustration can connect people to the seemingly invisible world of plants.

Throughout the rest of her article, Flannery (2007) talks about how she learned a great deal about plants and modern botany at the Botany and Plant Biology Joint Congress. Flannery describes the plant databases and research projects that made an impression on her. It is a selection of these databases that I will focus on next, as they are resources botanical artists may want to bookmark for future studies and travels.

PLANTS Database
http://www.plants.usda.gov
View tens of thousands of plant images, use interactive keys to identify the gymnosperms, legumes, grasses and wetland monocots in your state. Are you interested in creating a body of work about local plants? The information on this website will get you started.


National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII)
http://www.nbii.gov
A resource-rich website providing information about our nation’s biological resources.


Botanicus Digital Library
www.botanicus.org
A free Web-based catalog of botanical literature, with a special focus on illustrated books.


Jepson Herbarium, UC Berkeley
http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/consortium/about.html
A searchable database of 1.2 million specimens stored in herbaria throughout California. This is a resource worth exploring if your current project involves drawing a plant indigenous to California.


The C.V. Starr Virtual Herbarium
http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/VirtualHerbarium.asp
The online herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden comprised of 1.3 million herbarium specimens and 225,000 images. Specimen catalogs feature bryophytes, fungi, lichens, algae, and vascular plants. This is only one of many digitizing projects being conducted by herbaria across the U.S.


Tropical Plant Guide from The Field Museum in Chicago
http://fm2.fieldmuseum.org/plantguides
Explore the tropics! The Field Museum has created downloadable field guides to plants and animals for anyone to use. This is a fantastic resource. If you need a guide to explore the ferns of Bolivia, the fruits of Mata Atlantica, or the seedlings of Costa Rica, you’ll find color guides you can download and then laminate. Also available are photos of neotropical plants, herbarium specimens, and micro-herbaria available on DVDs.

Both of Flannery’s articles can be purchased online for $14 each. Alternatively, you can search for these articles at a library near you.

Literature Cited
Flannery, Maura C. 1995. The visual in botany. The American Biology Teacher. 57(2):117-120. [accessed 16 June 2011] <http://www.jstor.org/pss/4449936>

Flannery, Maura C. 2007. Daring botany. The American Biology Teacher. 69(8):488-491. [accessed 16 June 2011] < http://www.jstor.org/pss/4452210>

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Architect, lecturer and researcher, Ylva Dahlman, began to notice a trend in the graphic arts and design class she created for natural science and social science students. She noticed her students at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden were taking more than art and design concepts with them when each term ended. What Dahlman observed were hints that the art activities students completed in class were having an effect on the students’ overall learning.

Dahlman created an investigative strategy to find out what that “something” (Dahlman, 2007) was that students were taking with them after completing her course.

Knowledgeable about research efforts studying links between artistic experiences and academic achievement, Dahlman decided to investigate her students’ learning.

Questions & Reflection
Dahlman’s investigation into her students’ learning process occurred from 1994-2001. The data she discusses in Dahlman (2007) comes from the responses and reflections of 220 students completing her class during this time period. Students filled out two questionnaires — one before the course began and the other when the course ended. Two key pre- and post-questions Dahlman asked were, Do you think your vocational studies can be influenced by art studies? How? and Do you believe that a natural scientist thinks differently than an artist?

Dahlman also asked students to spend the last 15 minutes of each lecture reflecting on their learning.

Ninety-three percent of Dahlman’s students completed the pre-course survey, 84% completed the post-course survey, and 75% submitted reflective summaries. From students’ written responses, Dahlman (2007) concluded that their artistic experiences in class:

• Helped students develop problem-solving skills.
• Taught students how to see their environment in new ways.
• Instilled self-confidence in students.

Dahlman (2007) found each of these factors contributed to students’ overall ability to concentrate, resulted in students having a “changed attitude towards their studies”, and had an effect on their overall learning (Dahlman, 2007).

What type of art activity did Dahlman focus on to study the link between art and learning?

Dahlman’s Focus
Dahlman’s area of focus was drawing, specifically what happens during the drawing process. Dahlman (2007) refers to the act of drawing as “the pictoral process.” Dahlman (2007) claims the process of drawing turns “unarticulated forms of experience into non-verbal artifacts that invite reflection.”

According to Dahlman (2007), people make sense of confusing situations by grouping events into familiar categories. She says people acquire new knowledge only when they can overcome the urge to fall back on familiar categories. She says drawing is a great tool to use to overcome the desire for familiarity because drawing “often connects seemingly incompatible categories of experience” (Dahlman, 2007). Dahlman continues to say that through the act of drawing, “the world is being articulated in new shapes” and this takes us to a new level of understanding.

Eighty-eight percent of Dahlman’s students thought the art activities they completed in the graphic arts class had a positive effect on their studies. Regarding student responses to the question, Do you think your vocational studies can be influenced by art studies? How?, Dahlman shares two lengthy replies in her paper. Excerpts from these lengthy replies are included here.

One student replied:

Yes. It gives a knowledge of other ways of looking at the same thing. It yields a personal confidence. When it comes to problem solving, I feel that [if I] can make a painting of an abstract concept, I should feel more confident in other problem solving situations as well.

Another student said:

Yes. When I read a scientific article about, say, growth factors, I may understand all the words and accept their face value, but it is not until I make a sketch of the content of the article that I understand it thoroughly…..Creating pictures means taking responsibility for the kind of reality that you perceive.

In summary, Dahlman (2007) states it is important to view the world through the drawing process. As she puts it, “knowing is action” and drawing is action. Dahlman (2007) says it is through drawing that we “connect incompatible categories of experiences”. She also points out the act of drawing produces an object upon which we can reflect and it is through categorizing experiences in new ways and through reflection of the resulting object that we arrive at new knowledge.

In addition to describing her research project and results, Dahlman (2007) compares and contrasts the drawing process as a way of knowing to other ways of knowing (e.g., pragmatism, tacit knowing, metaphors). To read Dahlman’s complete analysis, search for this article at your local college library or order this article through the Wiley Online Library for $35 for 24-hour online access.

Literature Cited
Dahlman, Ylva. 2007. Towards a theory that links experience in the arts with the acquisition of knowledge. The International Journal of Art & Design Education. 26(3): 274-284. Web. [accessed 2 June 2011] <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2007.00538.x/abstract>

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Practical drawings are mental tools.

— Henning Nelms

When Henning Nelms wrote Thinking with a Pencil in 1957, he wrote it for two groups of people:

• People who wanted to use drawing “as a tool for thought and communication” but who did not know how to draw.
• People who knew how to draw, but who wanted to apply their skills in more than one discipline.

To emphasize the fact that drawing has a place in all disciplines, Nelms includes 692 illustrations that are more about how to use drawings instead of how to make them.

Nelms advocates practical drawing across all disciplines and encourages readers to use drawing as a learning tool in all areas of their lives. Throughout his 347-page guide to drawing and thinking, he shares tips and techniques that make accuracy easy to achieve.

After establishing foundation principles inherent in all drawings, he begins an insightful overview of drawing tips and techniques, never once straying from his primary objective — how to use drawing in everyday life.

The topics discussed by Nelms include:

• Drawing for practical use
• Drawings requiring no skills – Charts, diagrams, webs and grids
• Making easy drawings out of hard ones – How to lower the accuracy requirements of a drawing.
• Tracing Techniques – How to use tracing paper and tracing techniques as a learning tool to aid in the translation of an image.
• Creative Tracing – How to rearrange old material to create something new.
• Proportions – How to think about proportions, take measurements, and sight with a pencil.
• Fixed-line Construction – How to use parallel and perpendicular lines to create dimensions of space upon which freehand drawings are based. Of particular interest to botanical illustrators is Nelms’ discussion about ellipses and logarithmic spirals.
• Constructions for Free-line Drawings – How to create constructions for even the most irregular natural forms.
• Data Management – How to visualize numerical data.
• More Data Management – How to turn numerical data into graphic forms.
• Mechanical Aids – Tools to help you construct the parallel and perpendicular lines present in nearly every drawing.
• Seeing in 3-D – How to see the third dimension and how to “draw as you go.”
• Distortion – How to control distortion, create oblique drawings and manage ellipses.
• 3-D Form – How to project form in three-dimensions.
• Drawing People & Animals – How to draw figures, joints, muscles, hands, etc.
• Rendering – How to render an object (shading, scumbling, stipple, folds).
• Presentation – How to improve the appearance of a drawing through your choices in lettering and layout.

Included in this book is a glossary of equipment and material. When you read this section, remember that this book was written in 1957 and that some of the materials in this section may no longer be available.

The same needs to be said about the books Nelms includes in his bibliography. Nelms states he spent eleven years reviewing every book that had anything to do with drawing. In his bibliography, he only includes books he deemed of value when it comes to the practical aspects of drawing.

Thinking with a Pencil is a gem. It was reprinted in 1964 and again in 1981. Fortunately, this book is still available as a used book. Search for this book and other drawing books at independent bookstores on Biblio.com.

Literature Cited
Nelms, Henning. 1981. Thinking with a Pencil (With 692 illustrations of easy ways to make and use drawings in your work and in your hobbies). Ten Speed Press.
ISBN-10: 0-89815-052-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-89815-052-0

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Observe, observe, observe. It is not what the drawing looks like that matters. It is what has been seen and learnt that is important.

– Australian National Botanic Garden

The end of another school year is on the horizon. Summer nature camps are advertised everywhere you look. The summer season means road trips, warm evening walks and outdoor exploration.

Flowering plants get a lot of attention this time of year and now is a great time to look at them more closely. A fun way to bring attention to plants is through art. Creative activities involving leaves, paint, ink, etc. are pretty easy to find. What is more difficult to find are exercises about botanical illustration that are a nice mix of technique and history. If you are searching for lesson plans in botanical illustration to use at a summer camp or in some other informal learning situation, then consider the guides produced by the Australian National Botanic Garden (ANBG).

In Top Draw: Drawing Aussie Flora, educators will find comprehensive, concise and easy-to-teach exercises in botanical illustration. With this guide, both teachers and students will learn:

• How to observe differences in leaves
• How to dissect a flower
• How to observe, record and label flower parts
• How to shade a three-dimensional form in pen & ink through stippling
• How to draw on-location

In Top Draw: Drawing Aussie Flora – Further Design Activities, educators will find information about printmaking and illustration techniques. The majority of this second guide, however, is dedicated to botanical painting. The easy-to-follow exercises in this guide will have students young and old mixing colors and painting leaves in no time at all.

The Top Draw teacher guide and instructional packets are available online through the Education page on the ANBG website. See the literature cited section for direct links to these resources.

Literature Cited

• Australian National Botanic Garden. Top Draw: Drawing Aussie Flora. Web. 12 May 2011. <http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/education/programs/topdraw2010.html>
• Australian National Botanic Garden. Top Draw: Drawing Aussie Flora – Further Design Activities. Web. 12 May 2011. <http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/education/programs/topdraw2010.html>
• Australian National Botanic Garden. Top Draw: Drawing Aussie Flora – Teacher’s Guide. Web. 12 May 2011. <http://www.anbg.gov.au/gardens/education/programs/topdraw2010.html>

Also See…

• Buy a Magnifier, Receive a Free Dissecting Kit at ArtPlantae Books
• Members of the Society of Botanical Artists offer advice to budding botanical artists
• Today’s Botanical Artists discuss drawing branches and veins

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Artistolochia sp., CSU Fullerton Arboretum

Ecologist and educator, Dr. Bruce Rinker, answers this question in response to those who think botanical gardens are simply parks where play is not allowed (Rinker, 2002). In his article, The Weight of a Petal: The Value of Botanical Gardens, Rinker makes a case for the value of botanical gardens by tracing the close association between gardens and humans.

Since the first medicinal gardens were developed in Europe in the 1500s, gardens have served as trophies of colonial expansion, centers for taxonomic research, horticultural collections, resource centers dedicated to the study of specific groups of plants, and safe havens for threatened species (Rinker, 2002).

To help teachers demonstrate the value of botanical gardens in their classrooms, Rinker (2002) provides three pages of resources teachers can access easily on the Web, in books, and in journals. He also provides a link to a lesson created specifically for his article. The lesson, The Value of a Garden, was created by Dr. Marianne E. Krasny, Paul Newton, and Linda Tompkins, all from Cornell University. The activities they designed require students to think about gardens and the benefits they offer. The activities in this lesson plan can require up to three class periods and two weeks to complete, keeping students engaged and thinking about botanical gardens in several ways.

A valuable resource for classroom teachers and informal science educators, Rinker’s article, accompanying lesson plan, and the PowerPoint presentation by Krasny et al., are available online for free at:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/rinker2.html

Literature Cited
Rinker, Bruce H. 2002. The Weight of a Petal: The Value of Botanical Gardens. ActionBioscience.org. Web. 21 April 2011.
<http://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/rinker2.html>

It’s a Small World

Did you know…..botanists Philibert Commerson and Jeanne Baret worked with the botanists at Pamplemousse? Learn more about the early history of Pamplemousse, Pierre Poivre, and the Bougainville expedition here.

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Students think plants are boring. To challenge this viewpoint, we need to find a way to generate student interest in plants. But how?

We can begin by contemplating the findings of Niels Bonderup Dohn at the University of Aarhus in Copenhagen, Denmark. In Situational Interest of High School Students Who Visit an Aquarium, he investigated the factors triggering situational interest during a field trip to a local aquarium. He created a systematic approach of documenting interest because evaluations of visitor interest in a museum setting is usually anecdotal. As Dohn (2011) points out, teachers and docents may have a sense about how they can get their audience interested in a subject, but there aren’t data supporting the accuracy of their hunches and observations. Because the specific factors generating interest in museum settings have not been well documented, he set out to observe high school students as they learned about local marine life during a class field trip. Dohn (2011) asked a simple research question: How is the situational interest of students triggered during a field trip to an aquarium?

To find out which elements of the museum experience generated student interest in the ocean, Dohn (2011) did more than just follow sixteen 12th-grade students around the aquarium. His research began in the classroom eight weeks before students visited the aquarium. He observed, interviewed, and videotaped students for ten weeks. He collected data in three phases. In Phase 1, he observed the lectures students received in preparation for their visit to the aquarium. The second phase of data collection occurred during the field trip to the aquarium. Data collected in Phase 3, occurred in the classroom and consisted of follow-up interviews with students and their teacher.

Dohn (2011) collected data by conducting informal conversational interviews with students, videotaping students in the classroom and at the aquarium, conducting formal interviews with students, interviewing the classroom teacher, and by reading student reports about their ten-week experience learning about ecology, population biology, and the ecology of the Kerteminde fjord.

To analyze the wealth of qualitative data he collected, Dohn (2011) conducted a chronological review the the data and then applied codes to the transcripts of his conversations with students to help him identify the factors, as stated by the students themselves, generating situational interest during their visit to the aquarium.

Dohn’s Observations

The following “triggers” (Dohn, 2011) were identified as factors generating situational interest in students:

1. Social Involvement – Being in a group, belonging to a community
2. Hands-on Activities – Handling objects provided for concrete learning
3. Surprise – Learning the unexpected, having flash moments of insight
4. Novelty – Learning something new, participating in unique activities
5. Knowledge Acquisition – Building upon prior knowledge

Early interviews with students indicate students thought the subject of ecology was “boring” and “abstract” (Dohn, 2011). Student opinions about ecology changed after visiting the aquarium. All students said ecology was more interesting to them after the class field trip and their positive feelings about ecology and the ocean lingered for at least a couple weeks after their aquarium visit. It is not know if these feelings lasted longer or motivated students to learn more about the ocean on their own. Dohn (2011) did not investigate student interest after Week 10.

Dohn (2011) states his findings may not be applicable in all situations and cites his small sample size and the unique snorkeling opportunities at the aquarium as some reasons. He acknowledges that students visiting an aquarium without a snorkeling option may have fewer positive things to say about their experience. Nonetheless, Dohn’s investigation into factors triggering interest in students offers insight useful to not only museum docents and staff, but to informal science educators and all of us who strive to share information with the public.

Dohn’s article can be purchased online from the journal Science Education for $35 or obtained by visiting your local college library.

How can botanical artists use this information to generate interest in plants?

You are invited to post your comments below.

Literature Cited
Niels Bonderup Dohn. 2011. Situational interest of high school students who visit an aquarium. Science Education 95(2): 337–357. Web. 4 April 2011. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sce.20425/abstract>

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