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Prior to her current position as Senior Artist, Kandis earned her BA (1970) and MS (1980) degrees at the UW, and worked as a faculty assistant in the Biology Core Curriculum, prepping labs and helping to teach courses in zoology, botany, physiology and other biological subjects. During those years, Kandis (one of those “artsy” kids in grade school) was often called on to illustrate lab manuals — thus giving her experience in, and a taste for, scientific illustration.
In 1988 Kandis earned an Associate Degree of Applied Arts at Madison’s tech school, where she developed skills in preparing graphics and text for publication. When Botany’s illustrator position opened, Kandis applied for the job at once, knowing that the computer age was dawning for scientific illustration, even though she did not yet use a computer for graphics. When she was hired as the new Senior Artist, Kandis marched into the Macintosh lab at UW-computing, held up a $100 bill and yelled, “who wants to teach me this stuff?” Four hours later she had the basics of Adobe Illustrator and the rest is history.
Kandis now specializes in scientific illustration, typesetting and design. She uses her computer savvy to create educational posters, brochures, books, journal figures and information graphics for professors, students, and the occasional private client.
Please welcome March Feature Artist, Kandis Elliot!
ARTPLANTAE: When was the Botany Studio established?
KANDIS ELLIOT: I gave the studio its name when I began working here in 1988. The UW was founded in 1848, when all “natural history” departments in higher-education institutions had artists on staff. Back then, illustrations were done in pen and ink. Now illustrations are done on a Mac using a Wacom tablet and photography is done with a digital camera.
AP: Are the posters created for a specific class on campus or are they always created for a broader audience?
KE: They are created primarily for our departmental use, but work for a general audience as well. When Dr. Mo Fayyaz, the UW-Botany Greenhouses and Garden Director, wanted signage he could use with school groups and that could also be used in the college classroom, we were off and running with colorful visual posters that had a bit of botany tucked in.
We only produce about one or two posters per year because we work on these projects on our free time. The posters are printed in the studio when ordered via our website. They are printed on heavy semigloss 260-lb. paper using archival pigmented inks. Since earning First Place for Informational Graphics, we have been swamped with orders. The Botany Studio is now setting up a credit-card webstore to get past the snailmail bottleneck.
AP: The Botany Studio posts an hourly rate for non-departmental projects. Does this mean instructors from outside the University of Wisconsin can work with the Botany Studio?
KE: Yes. We have done work for our Department of Natural Resources — our “fish and game” environmental agency. We’ve also done work for wildlife groups, prairie enthusiasts, and parents of Girl Scouts. All of these projects are done on our own time or the rare free time.
AP: How many hours of free time do you set aside for the posters?
KE: About one day per week. I work four days (I’m a part-time employee) and then spend one day working on outreach projects.
AP: How long does it take to take a poster from concept to finished product?
KE: The easy ones only take a month. “Fungi” took nearly 6 months, including my crash course in fungology.
AP: How do you make a scientific illustration?
KE: When dealing with living or preserved material, we start with digital photos and/or scans. These are either retouched for clarity or completely “repainted” in Photoshop to create a more stylized figure. Often I need to make a diagram or “cartoon” with copious labels to accompany the image so that parts of, say, a micrograph, can be identified. If I don’t have excellent reference material, I take some mind-reading pills and go the science fiction route. Of course, this sort of mojo has to be fussed up to; scientific journals will not accept photos adulterated in any way unless they are send as an “illustrative concept figure.”
AP: You compose books in the Botany Lab. What types of books do you create?
KE: Textbooks, field guides and more. For example, we created a field guide for the spring woodland wildflowers for the UW-Arboretum, going out and digitizing all the flowers as they came into bloom (what a way to make a living!). We went on to make a much larger guide to prairie plants. These books are sprinkled with nifty extra tidbits about various species and esoteric but cool stories known by our faculty and staff that are normally shared only with botany students.
AP: Which software programs do you use to create the posters?
KE: I use all Adobe products–industry standard, and required by the publishers with whom we work.
AP: Do you paint or draw in your spare time?
KE: What’s “spare time?” No, seriously, I used to paint portraits of folk’s pets in the 1960’s and charge $25 per painting. It helped pay my tuition back in those knee-jerk reactionary hippy days. Over the years my vision slowly circled the drain (I was stabbed in the eye with a busted bottle when I was a kid) and could do less and less handwork. However, a giant monitor and the Wacom tablet let me keep illustrating.
AP: Do you have any advice for botanical artists who want to learn how to draw on the computer?
KE: Learn the same way I did. Glom on to someone who does it and get a couple hours of basics. Then play with Photoshop — press all the buttons, see how long it takes to crash the computer, that sort of fun. When you get a little experience, a one-day class is useful for filling in the gaps.
AP: How does working on a tablet differ from working on pen and paper? What are botanical artists most likely to notice during the first two hours of working on a tablet?
KE:
- You don’t need to apply nearly as much pressure with a stylus.
- Lots of gee-whiz feedback. The look and color of a digital drawing are the same or better, given the millions of colors available, and the multitude of effects you can do.
- You don’t experience the texture of a paper or canvas surface. You are able to draw on a tablet with your pen floating above the surface of the tablet.
- You have to get used to working without turning your tablet like you may be accustomed to turning your paper.
- Digital painting creates flat prints. The image may look great, but the physical texture of paper, canvas, paint gobs, etc., are absent. On the other hand, if you wish you had stopped painting 25 strokes ago, you can undo these 25 strokes in your History Palette. And let’s sing the praises of that “forgiveness of sins” button (CMD-Z or CTRL-Z)!
- You have more options with a digitizing tablet. You are not stuck with a static drawing. Working with a digitizing tablet is much more satisfying for artists who want to work quickly, not inhale fumes, and like to try several variations without losing any of the stages.
- And keep buying those lottery tickets so you can afford the loaded computer, tablet, camera and quality printer you’ll need for the perfect digital graphics experience.
Get Your Posters!
The Botany Studio has created ten beautiful and informative posters. Enlarged images of each poster can be viewed on the Studio’s website.
Ask The Artist with Kandis Elliot
Kandis will hold office hours this month. She will respond to readers’ questions and comments on March 4, 11, and 25. You are invited to post your questions in the comment box below and to follow the conversation as it progresses.
As always, you do not need to leave your full name. Your first name or a username will do.
Congratulations to you and your team on the NSF/Science mag honors!
You mention using a Wacom tablet. Have you tried the Cintiq system, and if so, what is your opinion of it compared to a Wacom with monitor?
Do you have any optical ergonomics tips for those of us with eye health challenges? (Beyond the “look up from the monitor every 20 minutes and angle the screen away from glare”)
Thanks to ArtPlantae for providing this forum!
Great questions, Wrenaissance Art. Thank you for posting.
Great Stuff Kandis!! Loved the posters, especially the one on the colors of plants.
This is a question that I ask my students all the time, more as an ‘investigative pondering’…..”if you could not go to the store to buy your own paint, how would you make it?” Would love to see a poster about the ‘origins of nature’s palette’.
Since your focus is on using technology, I would like to ask about your personal take on the controversy of the Masters of the Renaissance utilizing lenses/mirrors (early camera lucida) to create a more refined line of their subject….it sounds very similar to what you are doing with the digital camera and photoshop. How are ways that you balance the use of technology with the sensory approach of the naked eye. Also, have you worked with the new ipad technologies rather than the tablet? If so, what are their advantages in comparison?
thanks,
suzan
Hi, Capt. Suz
I like the (supposed) camera lucida use by Vermeer. However he did it, the paintings are fascinating. I’d rather look around a Vermeer room than at the Mona Lisa, for instance. But then, I’m not a real artist, I’m an illustrator of science, and you have to go for realism. And digital technology makes it easy–by comparison, Vermeer must have been ready to hang himself after finishing one of those small paintings with such detail.
As far as balancing use of technology with the sensory approach (we ate the fruits, safe mushrooms, etc. after we were done photographing them for the posters), my opinion is that the hardware is just another brush, the pixels are just another paint. I enjoy working with these tools as much as with acrylics and oils (more so–no waiting for stuff to dry). Also, if publishers are paying you by the hour, you have get stuff done muy rapido–and in a versatile format.
As I mentioned to Wrenaissance, I have not used the Cintiq (if that’s what you mean by ipad) but all I’m after is the ability to be precise–biggest Wacom, biggest monitor, fastest computer. Gotta get each of those little tiny trichomes placed just so on their little tiny stems. The great-leap advantage is over the mouse (painting with a brick). Otherwise point-n-paint technologies are all rather similar. I find the tablets with a pen tool, aka magic wand, better than the finger-touch: my finger is not as pointy as the pen.
Kandis
Here’s a review of these new technologies: http://www.graphicstabletreviews.com/guides/will-the-ipad-become-the-new-graphics-tablet
Thank you, Capt. Wallace!
I’m a volunteer with the Master Food Preserver program in Lane County, Oregon. We are doing a class on fermented foods (a popular subject these days) and we would very much like to have a copy of your poster to display. If it is available, please tell me how to purchase/order/otherwise obtain it. It is a fantastic display. And well worth the prize it won.
Thank you,
Laura Hinrichs
Laura,
Posters at The Botany Studio can be viewed and ordered at http://www.botany.wisc.edu/art/pages/posters.html
Hi, Wrenaissance Art
Thanks for the kudos! We’ve been rather overwhelmed with poster orders and are now making a Botany web store to help with orders–gosh, going plastic after all these years….
Still haven’t had any experience with the Cintiq, but it looks like great fun. None of the other UW illustrators have any experience with it either; must be too new. Our only concern is fine control–biggest tablet, most precise pen, biggest monitor, fastest computer. Whatever does the job for art that needs to be correct at the finest detail
Re: optical ergonomics tips for those of us with eye health challenges. Tell me about it! I’ve had over a dozen eye surgeries, including cataract implants, cornea transplants, stitches from a busted bottle fight (I lost), etc. I squint so bad my teeth are grinding all night. I have a piece of tape over one lens to lessen double vision. That business of looking at the horizon for a few minutes every half hour or so — who remembers to do that? — doesn’t help me at all. My eyes tell me to get up and take a walk, visit the garden, get a cuppa, etc. At least ten minutes. It’s not your retinas that need the rest, it’s the muscles in your eyes and face. Try holding a can of peas over your head all the while you’re zoned into artwork.
Good thing artists are rather compelled to do what they do, hey?
Kandis
Hi Kandis, great reading this ongoing interview.
When I work digitally, I sometimes find that the ability to zoom in and out on the stream disorients me. When drawing by hand, I focus on the paper and then step back, or step to the far side of the room, to get perspective on how the piece is looking. On the computer, I can zoom in forever, and sometimes find myself fiddling with pixels at 2000% magnification…which is really not the best use of time. On the other hand, when I zoom back out to 50% or 25% in an attempt to get a better perspective on the overall piece, I still have a hard time telling if it’s “working.” I find myself having to print things out, then taping the paper to the wall and stepping back across the room to look at it, which can add up to lots of wasted paper.
How do you handle issues of scale and overall coherence when working digitally?
Hi, Katura
Wow, you sound like a perfectionist I once mentored with a similar problem. Couldn’t stop working and couldn’t finish anything. I kept giving her tight deadlines to stop the fiddling, but I guess it was genetic thing. What she was doing, I finally guessed, was oil painting, only without having to wait for it to dry. Crazed freedom!
But seriously,
How big is your monitor? I have the biggest Apple LCD HD flatscreen available. Its sharpness and clarity let me see the details without too much zooming in, and the overall size lets me view the entirety from a design/balance/overall gestalt look. I.e., using a laptop is not going to work well for a larger-sized piece. Postcards, maybe.
I would not mess with blown-up pixels, because you don’t see these on the final product–you see an illusion, whether created by pixels or dots of pigment, based on gobs of tiny motes. You can’t do this kind of surgery by hand, so why with the computer?
Nontheless, there comes a point when I have to print the piece out to know “what it really looks like.” The bright RGB light of the monitor is going to lie to you at some level, especially if the piece is going to a CMYK press. I wait until I get a sense of finality on the monitor. Then I print a full-sized version, and I know at once what needs a tweak. Just a TWEAK.
UNLESS something TOTALLY isn’t working. Then I rely wholly on the protoplasmic output device: I make a print of what I have so far (or start with a blank sheet), hold it in my hands, and attack with a pencil. Make your drafts there, especially if you depend on this kind of feedback, because the computer, even at the speed of light (theoretically), can’t work as fast as quick sketching to make the ideas jiggle out of brain cells.
Katura, it sounds to me like you might be forsaking solid preliminary hand sketches, or pencil editing on the paper prints, as you’re doing a piece on the computer, but you are still relying on that kind of feedback.
On the other hand, I might not be the one to ask about overall coherence. On a project like the fungi poster, I stuff things in there until it explodes.
Kandis