Turns Out Doodlers Don't Make The Best Scientific Illustrators

 Last year my friend started a Scientific Illustration club at our school. What is scientific illustration you may ask?
I'm still not really sure I'd answer. In fact if you asked me that I'd probably do some sort of spastic shrugging motion and say, "It's where you illustrate things.... scientifically."

The very friend who created the club asked to be apart of it. At first I was like:

"........Okay"

Because my drawings are not exactly scientific I would be a 'doodler' among many 'illustrators' and YES, there is a difference. But then said friend mentioned there would be free food, and I was all

"You can't keep me away! .... Seriously"

I'm a sucker for free... well just about free anything. So I found myself there, every other week, attempting to illustrate scientifically. Remember like three lines ago when I mentioned there's a difference between illustrators and doodlers? Well I found that out.

See I would start out drawing, as scientifically as I possibly could without fully understanding what that meant. I would dutifully sketch the picture of a clover, flower, gourd, or, in this case, mushrooms and a stump:

 

My Illustration

See, the mushrooms even have a sort of mushroom-shape. If someone were trying to impersonate a mushroom, and they looked like this, you'd clap your hands and be like "Yes! Great mushroom impersonation". So you see, it all seems very scientific and you could even classify this as an 'illustration'.

But then something would happen.I would finish a little before all the other scientific illustrators, and flip over the paper, and draw something like this:

The Back of My Illustration

I would crank out an illustration of something pretty and dainty, and then spend the last 2/3rds of my time drawing a clawed unicorn, a conversation between a pen and an eraser, or an all-out Appliance War.

The other Scientific Illustrators, when they finished early, would water color their works, or do another. I would flip over my paper and doodle toasters and snowmen. That is the principle difference between an illustrator or serious artist and a doodler: One can do the other, but it's bout what fills the margins of your pages, and what runs through your mind.

And I really am a doodler at heart, no matter how mushroom-like my mushroom sketches may appear.