Sketching

I got my feedback for Semester One’s work at the end of last week, and I was extremely pleased with my grades.  There is always room for improvement however, and John’s primary suggestion was that – having already demonstrated that I can learn and use the technology well – I spend more time focusing on the artistic side of things.  So I’ve bought a new sketchbook and I’m now trying to articulate what are – frankly – some pretty crude-looking scientific diagrams in my own style.

Yes. Exactly.

I’ve also been watching the BBC’s “Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell” again armed with greater scientific knowledge than I had last time I watched it, and it’s interesting to see how they have interpreted the different organelles, many of which I can now identify by name.  For example, the cytoskeleton (top image) appears in microscope slides much as I have drawn it there – organic and sort of cotton-like – however the creative brains at Intelligent Creatures have represented it here as a sort of geometric cellular scaffolding.

The real question is – how much can I get away with? Granted, scientists’ ribbon diagrams can tell you how something is stuctured – but knowing the chemical structure of something is very different to knowing what something looks like (much as if one were trying to draw La Sagrada Familia based on the shape of the scaffolding alone).  The news that – only six weeks ago – DNA was photographed for the first time ever reminded me that we really know nothing at all.

My conclusion is that p53 probably looks a lot more interesting than the lump of balls I’ve drawn it as, and even if it doesn’t… for storytelling purposes, it’s important to me that my story’s hero look more momentous than a lump of balls. So it’s back to the drawing board (book?) tomorrow for another attempt.