Earth and Marine Science Illustration

Honored to be among several esteemed colleagues interviewed for this fine piece on the world of science illustration, appearing in EARTH magazine. Click on the image for a PDF of the full article.

Images copyright

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To the left is a geologic cross-section of Washington State, originally done as a museum exhibit explaining the geologic history of our region on the Columbia Plateau of Eastern WA. The plateau sits atop many layers of ice-age flood sediments, basalt, and ocean sediments. But how did all that happen? I found it all was impossible to explain without providing context - and that took me all the way out to the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the Pacific Ocean. How did I do the art? Click here and I'll show you.

By popular request, I created posters of the art, which are still going strong. I often get asked where one can get a copy. Click here.

When the museum moved into new quarters almost twenty years later, they wanted to do things a bit differently. When doing the original (above), it took a couple of months just to plot the landform elevations by hand, before even thinking about laying on paint. This time around I was able to pull digital elevation modeling (DEM) data right out of thin air - still magical to me - all by the awesome power of the Internet and courtesy of the taxpayers of the U.S. of A. I plugged the data into my 3D modeling software, then "draped" the model with either satellite imagery (inset image) or my own drape (main image). I touched up the original rendering for the interior of the section. The first geomap took me over a year to do.

The second one? Maybe a week.

This series of introductory college textbooks and their later editions, still going, kept me hopping for over fifteen years. In these books, each concept is presented as two-page spread built around the art. A groundbreaking alternative to the usual text-heavy pages of college books, these have all been quite successful.

The above panel was part of a fun outdoor interpretative display project for a nature preserve.

The smaller pieces in this section are a tiny sampling of the type of work done for various textbooks or nonfiction books. Much of the work had to be created in a pre-existing style, unless it was a first edition or heavy revision. Textbook work is usually "work for hire" where the publisher keeps the copyright - but an illustrator may still create similar works for other clients. I am now retired from textbook work, but for almost twenty years it was a large part of my scientific illustration practice.

All art on this page by Cynthia Shaw. Unless otherwise noted, textbook illustrations are © McGraw-Hill

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