| In
August 1998, she began working full time on scientific illustration
and part-time on Masters her degree and teaching certification.
During the Spring of 1999, she taught Saturday Art School to
children ages 6-8 at the University of Illinois. Her classroom
and curriculum are used as examples for student teachers to
emulate.
During
much of 1999, the scientific illustrations rendered by J.
Marie Metz, documenting characteristics of therevid (Diptera:
Therevidae) flies, were produced using traditional media such
as carbon dust, airbrush, pen and ink, and mixed media. Many
of these illustrations were published in 2000-2001.
Computerized
Rendering of Scientific Illustrations
In
September 1999, J. Marie spent two weeks at the Smithsonian
Institution being introduced to computerized illustration
by veteran scientific illustrator, George Venable. The advantages
of computerized images over those traditionally rendered are
that they are easily produced in color, stipple, or grayscale
in the time it takes to render a single illustration; mistakes
are easily corrected; images may be reproduced in various
sizes and output in many formats; original artwork no longer
has to be shipped for publication; and after the initial cost
of the computer hardware and software, no other art supplies
are needed. Thus at the end of 1999, J. Marie began climbing
the steep learning curve to rendering all her new illustrations
by computer, using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Mac
G4, Wacom Tablet, and Epson scanner. She has designed the
striking CD cover and disk artwork for the Diptera Data Dissemination
Disk, Vol. 2, for the North American Dipterists' Society,
which is scheduled for release in 2001.
Meetings
and Conferances Attended
1997
J. Marie Metz attended the annual meeting of the GNSI in Santa
Cruz, CA, where she learned the carbon
dust technique from Elaine Hodges. Ms. Metz uses this
technique almost exclusively now to speed up the rendering
of her therevid illustrations over pen and ink.
1998
She attended the GNSI conference in Ames, IA where one of
her works was selected for a juried exhibition during the
conference and featured on the meeting poster.
1999
She co-authored a poster presented at the national meeting
of the Entomological Society of America in Atlanta, GA, with
students on the database team, "Specimen label eccentricities
from antiquity to the present" by Amanda Buck, Joe Dunlop,
J. Marie Mullett, & Gail Kampmeier. The web
version was prepared by Amanda Buck.
2000
Ms. Metz presented the poster prepared for the ESA meetings
was then taken to PEET III, the meeting of all of the NSF
PEET groups held at the Smithsonian Institution in March 2000.
Jill Marie Metz also demonstrated electronic illustration
techniques whetting appetites for a half-day workshop in computerized
scientific illustration by George Venable of the Smithsonian.
The
Guild of Natural Science Illustrators
(GNSI) sponsors a yearly summer workshop and this year's Pen,
Pencil, Stylus, Mouse, was held at Beaver College in Glenside,
PA, near Philadelphia, 11-16 June. Scott Rawlins, Robert Mauro,
and Gary Welch worked with Marie and about 15 other participants
on computerized rendering of illustrations. In particular,
Marie wanted to improve her rendering of digital line drawings
by learning how to draw with a flowing line of varied weight.
Such a line would imitate the style of the coquille pen used
in traditionally rendered illustrations. Computerized lines
tend to be stilted and geometric, while traditionally generated
pen lines are free flowing and variable. By understanding
how to digitally manipulate line to a varied weight, simple
line drawings can be created that are more naturalistic in
character and form.
In
December, Ms. Metz was a key invited speaker to a Program
Symposium on "Scientific Illustration: will we always
need scientific illustrators?" at the Joint Annual Meetings
of the Entomological Society
of America, the Canadian Entomological Society, and the
Societe Entomologique du Quebec in Montreal, Canada. Her talk
was on computerized scientific illustration techniques. She
also participated on a panel to field questions about training
the non-professional to create their own scientific illustrations,
and submitted illustrations for the on-going slide show of
work by members of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.
2001
In March, Ms. Metz participated in the week long workshop
taught by Gerald P. Hodge on Trompe l'Oeil painting and scientific
painting at the Scottsdale
Artists' School in Arizona.
In
August, she attended the annual GNSI meeting in Bar Harbor,
Maine (USA), presenting an invited talk on Computerized Rendering
of Illustrations. The PowerPoint presentation
that formed the basis of her talk is now available. Note that
images range in size from 36-86K in this presentation and
may take additional time to download with slower connections.
Outreach
Workshops
and Presentations
In
April 1998, Ms. Metz taught a 3-h workshop
that was designed to teach scientists how to render their
own needed scientific illustrations professionally and accurately.
Members of the Irwin lab and grad student Shaun Winterton,
who was visiting from Australia, completed a tonal scale and
took a sketch of a fly head to begin a carbon dust drawing.
Despite much help and encouragement from Jill, it was obvious
most of the team needed much more practice, and several should
not quit their day jobs.
J.
Marie Metz taught a series of workshops in the spring of 2000
to local PEET groups on computer-assisted
scientific illustration. She drew on these experiences
for an invited Program Symposium panel discussion, "Training
the non-professional" at the Entomological Society of
America's annual meeting in December 2000 in Montreal, Canada.
GEMS
Local
GNSI Chapter Founded
J.
Marie Metz led the way to founding a chapter of the Guild
of Natural Science Illustrators here in east central Illinois.
The group meets monthly on the campus of the University of
Illinois. Contact Carie
Nixon for more information.
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