Biological drawings, the good, bad and ugly!

In your first practical you will be trying your hand at biological diagrams. You will get lots of guidance  in the lab, but I thought I'd share with you some important tips....

Seeing as pictures speak a thousand words, I have created some drawings of the femur or thigh bone in different styles so you can see what makes a good, bad and ugly biological drawing...

This is a bad biological drawing! You are not after an artistic picture with lots of shading! Plus the title is not very descriptive, unsuitably placed and written untidily. And where are the annotations? Where is the scale bar? Basically, this diagram may look quite pretty but it is actually totally rubbish!

This is an ugly biological drawing! It is too sketchy - the outer line is not continuous but it is made out of lots of short lines. The labels are not very descriptive and the label lines are untidy and not straight. Again the title is not very descriptive, unsuitably placed and written untidily. Plus, no scale bar. This is a very ugly biological diagram!

Now look at this! Definitely a good diagram! The outer perimeter is one continuous clear line. Different regions are distinguished with stippling (little dots) rather than ugly shading. The labels are clear, with descriptions underneath. The label lines are very neat, and drawn with a ruler. There is a nice clear descriptive title below the diagram and a clear scale bar. Yep, full marks for this one! :)

One last point, you are not going to be expected to know lots of complicated biological terms and names - but you should be able to describe what you see in lots of glorious detail!

I hope that has been helpful!

Your Life107 teaching team