[00:00:00]
Ben Newsome: Welcome again for another Ben Newsome Podcast. Glad to have you here. This week we’re hanging out with Gillian Hewitt, who is an amazingly talented artist and biologist. She really helps kids understand how to depict the world they see around them.

[00:00:45]
Ben Newsome: She is the founder of Imagine Naturalists, which is all about encouraging children to utilise their powers of observation and give them the skills to express their thought through fun and creative means. Trust me, you should see the work that she creates. My gosh, she can draw.

[00:01:05]
Ben Newsome: It’s not just about drawing; it’s about really looking at the fine detail of all sorts of biological specimens and anything around you. It’s about picking up the detail and understanding how it works with biotic and abiotic factors. Very cool for teaching science and highly creative. Let’s dive right into it.

[00:01:29]
Gillian Hewitt: I have a company which I call Imagine Naturalists, and it’s really a combination of that word. It’s a bit of a mouthful at first, but it does grow on you. It’s a combination of the word imagination and becoming a naturalist. It’s an education programme and I go into schools and I teach scientific concepts, but I do it through art activities to engage the children. Children really love doing art, and when we do it in the way that I present it in these programmes, they’re learning all about science concepts without actually realising that they’re getting passionate about the world around them.

[00:02:11]
Ben Newsome: And by the way, if the Imagineers from Disney can say that, you’re allowed to say Imagine Naturalists.

[00:02:22]
Gillian Hewitt: Well, I did think it might be too much of a mouthful, but I ran it by a few of my first kids and they all loved it, so that’s what stuck.

[00:02:40]
Ben Newsome: Well, it actually really sets the tone of what you’re doing. I mean, I’m aware of some of the projects you get up to and they very much are truly about imagination. But when you say art, we’re not being flippant here. This is really detailed, quality stuff that you’re getting up to. Maybe just before we get into all that, what made you want to start this sort of thing?

[00:03:00]
Gillian Hewitt: I have a background in science and I used to work in marine biology, and I worked around and about in a few places including Antarctica. When I came back from there and completed some of my research, I found that people were often asking me could I draw them something that they wanted to convey in their science research, something that they couldn’t really communicate with photography or they wanted to just put an emphasis on something that they were doing in their research, and so they would ask me to draw it.

[00:03:28]
Gillian Hewitt: I realised there was a real need for art as a language in science. It’s basically the way that we all mostly understand complex concepts, through illustrations and visual impact. So once I moved over here to New South Wales—well, I was originally from New South Wales, but once I came back, I discovered that they had a natural history illustration degree at the University of Newcastle.

[00:03:56]
Gillian Hewitt: So I decided to jump back in and do a second degree on top because it was really a fusion of my two passions, and I absolutely loved it. I did very well. I actually got the faculty medal with that one down at Newcastle Uni. After I completed that, I was looking for something that was going to give me a job that could keep me passionate about that. I really didn’t see anything that existed.

[00:04:24]
Gillian Hewitt: I have young children, and my kids benefit a lot from my ability to point things out to them. I wondered if other kids would also benefit from this. So I decided to create an education programme where I could fuse art and science, and I took it to a few schools and it’s been immensely successful and we’ve expanded from there.

[00:04:52]
Gillian Hewitt: I go in face-to-face, I have a wide variety of programmes that I do in different schools with all different topics. Mostly I am going into primary schools, but it’s a really great age to get them passionate about going forward into the world and noticing what’s around them. If they are given those skills through art to communicate those things, they have a really good foundation to take that further down the scientific inquiry road.

[00:05:22]
Ben Newsome: Oh, absolutely. By the way, you probably picked up, we really do have a storm coming over the top of us, which makes me in this box, this padded room where as I chat to you, makes me imagine what on earth is going on above my head. But the kids naturally love to draw. It’s one of the very first things that kids do when they’re very young.

[00:05:45]
Ben Newsome: But I feel like it starts to drop off a little bit as we get older, especially when we start being conscious of what others think. But then again, if you’re trying to convey a message, especially an idea, especially onto paper, in some way, shape, or form you have to put it down and back yourself. How do you find working with kids who may be reticent to go down an art path even though they’re very creative when you speak to them? I’m just wondering, what are the first steps to be able to get a kid to harness what you get into?

[00:06:08]
Gillian Hewitt: You’re exactly right with how they lose that confidence as they get older. If you grab them at that high school age, there are so many instances where they shake their heads and say, “I can’t do that,” when I show them what activity we’re going to do.

[00:06:33]
Gillian Hewitt: But you lead them into it with very foundational basic skills and take them up step-by-step. Like anything, when you learn the tips and tricks of the trade, there are little shortcuts, there are little tools to be used. They use those and then suddenly their back straightens, they put their shoulders back, and they look at what they’ve done and they are just so amazed that they can create something that is really amazing.

[00:06:58]
Ben Newsome: I’ve got to say, one of the things that’s really amazing is that, for a start, your illustrations frankly are just top-notch. They’re really good. But at the same point, what I love is that you really let them go into fanciful imagination, especially with the Mars plants thing. Could you tell us a little bit about that particular thing?

[00:07:11]
Gillian Hewitt: Most of the programmes that I design, I specifically put an educational content in and they learn a bit about, for instance, the adaptations of plants in our world. Plants grow in every environment all over the world in many different ways and shapes and forms. They do that to overcome the environments that they live in and be successful in those environments.

[00:07:35]
Gillian Hewitt: When I designed the “Plants on Mars” programme, it was specifically… we discussed the difference between the atmospheric conditions, the lack of light, the temperature, those kinds of things in comparison to Earth. We had a look at some comparable plants that might live in extreme environments on Earth and how do they get around those extreme conditions.

[00:08:00]
Gillian Hewitt: As well as that, we then talked about how you would do it on Mars if you were a plant. If you had to adapt to live, what kind of changes—although they do understand that these changes are incremental over millions of years—but what kinds of features or adaptations would the plants have to have to be able to survive on Mars? And what would they even look like?

[00:08:30]
Gillian Hewitt: So when that was posed to them, it was really a great activity because there is no correct answer. Of course we know—hopefully maybe we’ll find something with Perseverance trundling around over there—but we know that there’s not a great deal of plant life on Mars. So there’s no wrong answer. Just design it and illustrate it.

[00:08:55]
Gillian Hewitt: If you’ve learned a few skills on how to put some technical detail into your illustrations, you can create something that is totally plausible. So long as you can explain why you’ve put those adaptations and features, then that’s a win in my book because they are thinking about the external forces, the internal adaptations, they’re illustrating it to their own creative level, and it’s just a really great beginning to get them thinking about how things would be if you did live on Mars.

[00:09:22]
Ben Newsome: I remember when I was a really young kid, I must have been nine or ten years old, there was a… I don’t even know the name of the book at this point, but I do remember the story effectively saying what would a silica-based life form look like? What would some sort of organism look like if you could go into the Jovian atmosphere and it somehow can handle the pressures and everything else?

[00:09:47]
Ben Newsome: Would it be this balloon-shaped thing that can rise up and down like an algae does in a river system? That combination of imagination but truly adhering to the actual abiotic factors that exist in one of these worlds really bridges the real with the potentially unreal—or maybe they are real, who knows with the number of worlds that are out there beyond our solar system. It’s really cool. So how old are the kids you mainly work with?

[00:10:14]
Gillian Hewitt: Mainly I am working with primary school aged children, so years three, four, five, and six. But I have a regular programme even at the local preschool and they absolutely love it. Those children are just so amazing even at the age of four with their little inquiring minds. I have done high school and adult workshops as well, but the main part of my working day is in primary schools.

[00:10:47]
Ben Newsome: One of the things also is especially when you’re getting kids to learn to do a scientific drawing is that you really need to be true to the specimen that’s in front of you. And then there are some rules around it. Even just putting arrowheads on the end of lines when you’re trying to point out a thing is somewhat of a no-no in some ways because it blocks things. So what are the kind of things that kids and effectively teachers need to look out for, especially when they’re first coming to grips with scientific drawing?

[00:11:18]
Gillian Hewitt: Well, one of the things that I do impress upon the kids is that if they keep a writing journal, like a nature notebook, they can do many scribbly observational drawings which are really good for their cognitive development, holding the pen, making their observations, and doing their drawings, even if they’re not a finished artwork. It’s still conveying information, and the next time that they look at that artwork, they are going to remember, “I remember that that animal had that feature” or “there were those particular shapes in that rock.” They don’t have to be beautiful finished drawings just to make an observation and to take it to the next level.

[00:11:59]
Gillian Hewitt: When they do take it to the next level, I show them basically how to break it down and do a very detailed illustration. The beauty of that is stopping and looking at the very close details that make up the whole of something. Our brains, we often trick ourselves into feeling like we know everything about everything. We all have blinkers on to a certain extent; especially people who are very focused on their research, for instance scientists who are deep in their research, often stop seeing the bigger picture because they really do believe that they already know everything about that.

[00:12:41]
Gillian Hewitt: But when you are forced to draw something, you are asked to look at all the little details to make it look realistic. More often than not, when you just sit quietly, take it apart in your head, look at the little hairs, the pores, you’ll notice so many more things about that object that you’re trying to draw. When you place them into your drawing, it’s going to look so much more realistic. One of the good things to do is to draw the object in its entirety, but then break it down into magnified or blown up portions of details.

[00:13:14]
Gillian Hewitt: So if you were drawing a leaf, for instance, you might draw a section that you’ve looked really closely at and then you scale it up and draw it a little bit. It might have certain vacuoles or hairs on the leaf or veins that you hadn’t noticed before. Those kinds of observations lead to asking the bigger questions further down the road, maybe when you’re a little bit older: “Why is it like that? Why did it do that?” Those kinds of observations lead to many advances, for instance in the art of biomimicry in humans. We’re often looking to nature for the solutions for human problems. That’s what you need to be able to do is look at how and why things are the way they are.

[00:13:56]
Ben Newsome: True, and actually it reminds me of keeping with the space theme, but cobbler’s pegs, Bidens pilosa, farmer’s friend, also known as the stuff that sticks to your socks. You look at it really closely and it’s got these little hooks on the end of their seed. It makes sense because by attachment they get to disperse their seed. And the George de Mestral story, yes you know that story, that’s what I was leading towards.

[00:14:23]
Ben Newsome: It’s such a really good example of how this little hooky thing on the sock suddenly produces this incredibly powerful thing, Velcro, and the ability to connect stuff. I know that even looking at other objects that are found in nature can be applied in engineering. I’m thinking of the pads underneath a chameleon’s feet. Why on earth can they stick to something? It actually goes down to some chemical forces, but it’s very powerful when you really look up close to things.

[00:14:50]
Gillian Hewitt: Yes, and when you’re trying to communicate those thoughts and questions, the best way to do it is through visuals or artworks. I mean, we’re all daunted by a massive book that has only got pages and pages of text in it. We love those visuals and this gives the children the ability to communicate visually. A lot of kids prefer to communicate through drawings. A lot of them don’t have those other literacy skills and they can really shine in this environment.

[00:15:23]
Ben Newsome: They absolutely can. The reality is that if you look at a collaborative team and you want to make stuff happen, there’s always someone who can put something down on paper. There’s someone who’s really good at speaking about things. There are other people who are good at leading people towards the destination. You’ve got the leaders and all these components are incredibly powerful, but without the ability to put designs down, it’s incredibly hard to convey something just with text.

[00:15:53]
Gillian Hewitt: I completely agree.

[00:15:57]
Ben Newsome: I wish I had that skill, but then again you could always argue that’s the same thing as saying I wish I could play guitar; well you’ve got to start somewhere, right? Then you learn the process and you get better and better over time.

[00:16:07]
Gillian Hewitt: Absolutely, and that’s the first thing I say to the kids when I start with new groups: it’s a skill that you can learn like any other thing. That’s my example about learning the guitar. You don’t know how to do that, and you certainly don’t know how to do it well after you’ve picked it up for only five minutes. Like anything else, it’s something that you can work on and practice. I find it interesting because quite often the teachers in the room are very hesitant to join in the activities because they have well and truly stepped past that age bracket where children are starting to be a bit scared of having a go. But usually I can coax them into having a go as well and they also get similarly surprised at their awesomeness once they know a few tricks.

[00:16:51]
Ben Newsome: True, and I kind of think about when you’re looking at engineering challenges, eventually they’re building blocks, and how those blocks articulate together produces a very complex artefact that does a thing. I suppose in some ways knowing how to do—whether you’re dealing with shading techniques or perspective or whatever it is—those techniques can be learned over time and then they compound on top of each other to eventually produce something amazing.

[00:17:17]
Ben Newsome: It’s really cool. So righto, if you start somewhere with a blank canvas, let’s say they’re 12 or 13 years old, really keen to learn but haven’t really picked up a pencil or brush and they want to really nail it. How long does it take for a child to really start to grasp what to do in such a way that you know what, they’re really, really good at this?

[00:17:44]
Gillian Hewitt: I don’t think it takes that long. Once they are encouraged with a little bit of confidence. I would say, normally my terms run over a 10-week course in schools. By halfway through that, the kids are running down to show their parents the things they have drawn and are really excelling. There are many, as I keep coming back to, tips and tricks, and once they are able to use those, I don’t think it takes long at all with a little bit of encouragement and desire to do so.

[00:18:20]
Ben Newsome: Fair enough. Let’s be honest that sometimes you can’t be everywhere for everyone, and there’s only one Gillian. So if someone’s on the other side of the world, and for whatever reason they can’t connect with you, what would be the first steps that you’d suggest that they should take to be able to help kids start to put their ideas and interpretations of what’s happening in nature down on paper so people can understand at a scientific level what’s going on?

[00:18:48]
Gillian Hewitt: My advice to somebody like that would be to get themselves a little sketchbook which they can draw something in every day or every couple of days. As I mentioned before, they don’t have to all be beautifully finished tonal artworks. Just do little drawings and practice looking in the garden. It’s really all about looking, or in the playground or down at your local park or the local environment wherever they are.

[00:19:16]
Gillian Hewitt: Just stop and look around because we live in a really fast-paced digital world. It’s a very mindful, grounding thing to do to take five minutes and look closely at something in nature. If you start to look around, you’ll start to notice little changes. They may be day-to-day changes or seasonal changes or even something bigger that you can then say, “Why is that like that?”

[00:19:36]
Gillian Hewitt: You can then go back through that little notebook. It’s like a little diary of your drawings. As you progress with your drawing, if you do have a little practice every day, if you add a little bit of shading here and there, it will be no time at all before you will be ready to do a more finalised drawing that you might even consider putting in a frame.

[00:19:56]
Ben Newsome: Totally. Actually that reminds me, I had a primary teacher get us to have these cardboard frames to extend out from our arms. You’re holding this picture frame with a hollow space in the middle and going, “Okay, whatever’s in that frame is what you’ve got to draw.” So you’ve got to choose whether it was going to be something up close or a landscape that was further away, but either way the frame helped you to focus yourself just a little bit. Let’s be honest, you’re holding a piece of cardboard. But it does make a huge difference. I guess in essence it doesn’t have to be expensive.

[00:20:28]
Gillian Hewitt: Oh no, absolutely not. You only need pencils and paper. One thing that I would advise to get as a little piece of equipment is called a paper blender or a paper stub or a tortillon. It can be called anything like that. They look like pencils. You get them in packs of about five. They’re very cheap. You can buy them in any of the cheap shops in the art aisle or at an art supply store. Those are the real tricks to being able to shade so there’s no graphite in the middle, it’s just very tightly wound paper that looks like a pencil. You use that to blend the pencil that you’ve put onto the paper. Honestly, it’s the secret weapon to make your sketches look fantastic.

[00:21:10]
Ben Newsome: I had no idea about that weapon.

[00:21:13]
Gillian Hewitt: I know, it’s criminal that people don’t know because the first time that anybody uses one of these, they just look up with this look of shock on their face and go, “Oh my god, that’s how you do it.”

[00:21:24]
Ben Newsome: It’s like when you watch home improvement shows and they just do the thing so quickly, so easily and you go, “Oh, I could have done that.” Well, no, actually it takes years of knowing what to do before you can do it so easily. But what a great trick, that’s awesome.

[00:21:37]
Gillian Hewitt: Yeah, and it’s a very cheap little piece of equipment. You can just use your finger to blend the pencil or the graphite, but it’s not as good as when you use one of those. They are super cheap, easy to buy.

[00:21:51]
Ben Newsome: Fair enough, and that’s probably why there’s a smudge tool on Photoshop. I guess so. Effectively the same thing. Now look, thank you so much, Gillian. There’d be people listening going, “You know what, I need to get in touch.” So how would they do that?

[00:22:01]
Gillian Hewitt: I have a website which I believe we’ll put up afterwards, but it’s just www.imaginenaturalists.com.au. On that website you can contact me via my email address or my phone number. I’ve also got posts under Imagine Naturalists on both Instagram and Facebook, and I can communicate through those as well. I often post the children’s work as they are doing it up on Instagram—Instagram especially, Facebook is probably not as good for me, but Instagram and my website are good places to get me.

[00:22:38]
Ben Newsome: Perfect, definitely. As usual, we always put those links in the show notes. Before you go, I thought I might just ask, what was the best thing about going down to Antarctica?

[00:22:46]
Gillian Hewitt: Oh, there’s no one answer to that question. That was the most awesome experience. Everything about it was fantastic. Maybe I would have to say the fact that the animals down there are so unafraid of humans because they haven’t learned to be afraid. When they see you on the ice, they come—so the seals and the penguins—they’ll come racing across towards you to check you out and they just don’t have any fear. It was lovely.

[00:23:17]
Ben Newsome: Oh, that sounds awesome. That is actually a bucket list thing for me. I don’t know what port I’ll leave from—maybe South America, but who knows, New Zealand. Where did you leave from?

[00:23:27]
Gillian Hewitt: I left from Tassie, from the Australian Antarctic Division. But I would love to go to South America to do that jump across as well. That’s beautiful over there.

[00:23:37]
Ben Newsome: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Gillian, for jumping on this podcast for a little bit. I’m really looking forward to hanging out with you with the Australian Virtual Astronaut Challenge which is just around the corner.

[00:23:47]
Gillian Hewitt: Yeah, can’t wait. That will be really exciting.

[00:23:49]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. Gillian, have a fantastic afternoon.

[00:23:52]
Gillian Hewitt: I will do. You too.

[00:23:54]
Announcer: We hope you’ve been enjoying the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We love making science make sense. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? If you’re outside of Australia, you can connect with us via a virtual excursion. See our website for more.

[00:24:12]
Ben Newsome: What a great way to link scientific theory with imagination. I mean, Gillian is doing an amazingly great job at getting kids to unlock their own potential through creative drawing. It’s so fantastic and I’ve got to say, it’s still bedded down in scientific theory. Why not challenge your students to create their own ideas, draw them down, what they think might be living on another world?

[00:24:37]
Ben Newsome: It links the abiotic and biotic factors that truly exist, bedded down in true scientific theory, but it links to what could be, what might be, and what a great headspace to be in your classroom. So if you want to find out more, head on over to imaginenaturalists.com.au and you can find out what Gillian is getting up to and how to get in touch.

[00:24:53]
Ben Newsome: Thank you again for hanging out on this episode yet again. There are more episodes coming up on the Fizzics Ed Podcast. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and this is the Fizzics Ed Podcast, and I’ll catch you another time.

[00:25:09]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new “Be Amazing” book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F-I-Z-Z-I-C-S and click “100 free experiments.”

[00:25:38]
Announcer: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. AEON.net.au

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the concept behind Imaginaturalists?

Imagine Naturalists is an education programme that fuses the word imagination with the practice of being a naturalist. It teaches complex scientific concepts through art activities, encouraging children to use their powers of observation to understand the natural world while developing creative skills.

How does drawing help a student understand science better?

Drawing acts as a language in science. When a student is forced to illustrate a specimen, they must slow down and look at fine details like pores, hairs, or vacuoles. This process of deep observation often leads to better cognitive retention and prompts deeper scientific questions about why certain features exist.

Can students who feel they aren’t “artistic” still participate?

Absolutely. Scientific drawing is a skill that can be learned through practice, much like learning to play the guitar. By using foundational techniques and specific tools, even students who are initially hesitant often find they can produce high-quality, realistic work that boosts their confidence.

What is the “Plants on Mars” programme?

This is a creative exercise where students learn about plant adaptations on Earth and apply those biological principles to a hypothetical Martian environment. They must consider abiotic factors like lack of light, extreme temperatures, and atmospheric conditions to design and illustrate a plant that could plausibly survive on Mars.

What is the “secret weapon” for improving scientific sketches?

Gillian recommends using a paper blender, also known as a paper stub or tortillon. This inexpensive tool is made of tightly rolled paper and is used to blend graphite or charcoal, allowing for smooth shading and realistic textures that are difficult to achieve with just a finger or pencil.

Extra thought ideas to consider

The Power of Biomimicry

Encourage students to look at how nature solves engineering problems. A classic example is the invention of Velcro, inspired by the way burrs (like Farmer’s Friends) attach to socks. By observing specialised structures in nature, we can find innovative solutions for human technology.

Nature Journaling for Mindfulness

In a fast-paced digital world, keeping a nature sketchbook provides a grounding, mindful experience. Even a few minutes of quiet observation and “scribbly” drawing in a local park can help children (and adults) notice seasonal changes and feel more connected to their immediate environment.

Discussion points summarised from the FizzicsEd Podcast, verified and edited by Ben Newsome CF