For visual learners of all kinds, scientists, artists, teachers, administrators, and others, Strauss, a former chemistry professor who teaches drawing at the U. of Vermont, examines how artists, scientists, writers, and others use drawings, sketches, diagrams, charts, and other graphic representations as a focus for the creative work that follows, whether it is solving a problem, composing a musical score, or creating a painting. He explores how different approaches to the ways marks are made on a page in symbols, words, and pictures can be used to enhance learning and help people understand the world they see and imagine by recording, revising, andcoming to know it through drawing. He details the use of drawing-to-learn as a teaching strategy in all disciplines from grade school through college and provides personal reflections and accounts that show how exploration and discovery from life experience inspire and evolve from drawing. He discusses ways to teach students about symbols, their meaning, and how to use them to represent parts of the world that cannot be seen, such as atoms and molecules. He incorporates examples of children drawing to learn various things, especially scientific concepts; discusses doodling, cartooning, and picturing to learn; provides a case study of the transition from cartooning to animation and design; and addresses learning from the sketches of artists like Klimt, Cezanne, Seurat, Van Gogh, Degas, Gaugin, and contemporary artist Tad Spurgeon. The appendix outlines a workshop methodology. Annotation 2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
