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Pen to Paper: a celebration of the enduring power of the sketch in a digital age

Ailsa Katharine Naismith1

Abstract

I will discuss the history of sketching in geology and argue for its enduring relevance in the digital age. I will begin with ancient cave paintings depicting volcanoes, conveying our millennia-long fascination and compulsion to illustrate them. Moving to the advent of geological science, I will discuss the emerging art of the geological field sketch and its purpose -- to observe features of the landscape and from those observations interpret geological processes. Art historians (e.g., John Berger) argue that the singular power of drawing is found in the quality of our looking, and I will consider how their arguments apply to geological and geology-adjacent sketches (e.g., Alfredo Mackenny, Alfred Wainwright, my own work), that contemplate both the natural landscape and our place within it. I will discuss how this duality is relevant to modern geology, which increasingly considers the mutual influence of humans and the Earth on shaping each other. This forms my closing message, which urges that the act of putting pen to paper (or stylus to iPad) to draw has an enduring power in an age of generative AI. This demonstrates that compelling geological maxim: The past is the key to the present -- and the future!