Scientific illustration as a pedagogical tool in interdisciplinary projects

We first encounter scientific illustration at a very early age, when we get our hands on our first popular science picture book, or when entering the education system. Most of us learn from scientific illustration, and some of us create it. Among the latter are students of illustration at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. Scientific illustration is part of our curriculum, and we also explore it further in specific workshops and summer schools. In this paper, we will present the methods used in this learning process. We will discuss how the visual arts and science are connected and how they can work together to help us understand, create, and design educational content and teaching aids. We will define scientific illustration and its place in the field of illustration. We will explore its forms and expressive techniques. We will touch upon established codes and conventions in depicting images. Our focus will be on the use of illustration as a method in pursuit of a learning outcome. We will introduce the drawing method used in teaching natural science illustration. The process of working on the project Marine Organisms for the Blind and Partially Sighted, where we created tactile illustrations for the blind and partially sighted, will be presented in detail. In this project, we also involved expressive techniques that had specific properties which had the potential to achieve the desired final result.