Hi Scott,
The best way is with a camera lucida - this take practice and a little
instruction. Then you can ink your drawings by hand using vellum and
scan them into the computer or better yet, scan your pencil sketches
into the computer and use them to make Adobe Illustrator line drawings
with the pen (or pencil more complicated) tool. A drawing pad helps
with this immensely. Once you have an Illustrator file you can
resize, reorient, change line weight, change color, and compile
figures endlessly - the flexibility makes it well worth the steep
learning curve and cost of Illustrator. You can also do this from
photos but the problem with photos is that you have a single, usually
narrow focal plane which doesn't lend itself well to illustrations
which you want to be a bit 3-D. The one thing that Illustrator line
drawings can't do well is stippling but there are a couple ways to do
it.
Good photos often suffice and lack the interpretation by the
illustrator that is inherent in line drawings. Be sure photos are
well labeled and clear. I like the combination of a photo and line
drawing interpretation next to it of it to map out what the viewer is
looking at.
Best of luck,
Karen
On Mar 13, 2009, at 8:15 AM, Scott Jones wrote:
> Hi!
>> I would like to survey the list for the most common and/or most
> effective way for non-illustrators to generate illustrations of
> specimens for publication.
>> Do most of you rely on the camera lucida?
>> What about importing digital images into editing software such as
> Illustrator to create line drawings?
>> Thanks!
>> Scott Jones
>> <ATT00001.txt>
~~~
Karen Osborn, Ph.D.
UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0202
office 858-534-3873
laboratory 858-534-9941
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