Alasdair McGregor

Must confess that I really love the realist art that comes with the Australian Geographic. Takes me back to my uni days when we had to draw the elements of various grasses ...fastidious work ...carried out with the aid of dissecting microscopes. And I remember asking our lecturer why we didn't just take a photo. His comment...which I thought a bit lame at the time.....was that it was very hard to take a photo that illustrated all the elements was well as a drawing. With the benefit of much hindsight and experience in both photography and botanical painting...I must say that I agree with him. And the illustrations in the Australian Geographic really bare this out. They are both great works of art and great scientific references.
And, I must say, that I really take my hat off to the individual artists. Fantastically talented people and highly skilled technicians. Is it great "art". Who cares? I think it's great.
What I did find lacking was some idea of the artists at work. I would really have liked to see pictures of their working technique; their sketches, the roughs, the process. And pictures of them in their studios. How did they achieve that fantastically realistic fur, for example. What sort of brushes did they use. (Some of this one can get from magazines devoted to painting or drawing ...but I think it might have lifted the current book to another level. As it is, it is a great summary of the graphic work in the magazine ...and maybe this is all that was desired by the publishers. I give it four stars.… (mehr)