line drawings

[Harvey E. Ballard, Jr.]

Regarding doing botanical illustrations for species treatments, etc., I
have had excellent luck lately with scanning herbarium and other material
into digital format, then opening the file in Adobe Photoshop and using
various drawing and airbrush tools to outline and shade the plant.  If one
has a little experience or artistic talent with envisioning
three-dimensional shading and perspective, a fine illustration can be
produced.   Resolution is great enough on high-res scanners that one can
also illustrate small structures like flowers, fruits or seeds, stipules
and leaf dentition pretty accurately as well.  If one has access to a
dissecting microscope-video attachment, one can also do nice floral
dissections as part of habit illustrations in this manner, too.  This is an
alternative for folks in departments without the funds to support botanical
illustrators.

Best,
Harvey Ballard

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Harvey E. Ballard, Jr., Assistant Professor, Plant Evolution and Systematics
Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
Porter Hall, Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701
(740) 593-4659 (office & lab phone)
(740) 593-1130 (fax)
email: ballardh at ohio.edu OR ballardh at ohiou.edu OR
ballardh at oak.cats.ohiou.edu