Q. Why do you think scientific instructional materials frequently use drawings over photographs?

A. Possibly because an artist’s rendering of detail can be even more precise and descriptive than a photograph. This is an illustration by Marion E. Ruff taken from the book The Taxonomy of Vascular Plants by George H. M. Lawrence. Miss Ruff’s drawings are some of the most elegantly rendered scientific drawings ever made.

Can you think of others that have deeply impressed you?

Perhaps it was one of these by Ernst Haeckel of single celled organisms.