The Diversity of Life Illustrations

With her illustrations for The Diversity of Life, Sarah shifted from stipple drawing in pen and ink, to continuous tone drawing in graphite. The tonal richness and luminosity of these illustrations is due, in part, to the rigorous training that came with Sarah’s earlier experience of building images dot by precise dot. Stipple drawing became a tradition in scientific illustration as a means of rendering with great precision—within the limitations of earlier printing technology. Today, the former limitations of half-tone screening in reproducing subtle tonalities, has given way to the amazing fidelity of computerized scanning. Sarah’s graphite illustrations fully utilize the expanded range of this contemporary instrument.

Illustrations from THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE by Edward O. Wilson, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1992 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, are reproduced by special arrangement and kind courtesy of Harvard University Press. All rights reserved.