Scientific draftsman Naturalis retires: “Drawing has always been in me”

(Video: Robbert van Cleef).

He is not well known, but many people will have seen his drawings. Bas Blankevoort worked for 30 years as a scientific draftsman in Leiden for the LUMC and for Naturalis. Now he is retiring, but he is far from finished.

He likes to talk about his job. Science always attracted him, but in the end he opted for the academy of fine arts and not for university studies. “Drawing is really in me. And for science and anatomical drawings, it’s also important that you understand what you’re doing. And you have to have very fine manual skills, just like a surgeon.

A visit to Bas Blankevoort’s study is not for those who faint at the sight of an anatomical drawing of the human heart or are frightened by an insect. It is full of it. Over the years, Bas has made thousands of drawings in collaboration with doctors from LUMC and for naturalis biologists. He drew just about every part of the human body.

Dragonfly
His field already has the necessary history in science. “Obviously people started out with very accurate reproduction, and there’s a lot of detail in there. They can be very important to scientists. As an example, Bas mentions the abdomen of dragonflies.” They are all different and that’s what a biologist wants to know to recognize the species.”

Learning material
“At Naturalis, they use my drawings for scientific publications and research purposes. And today I work a lot for exhibitions and for websites. That’s why I do infographics. It’s different with anatomical drawings. There, the drawings are used as teaching material and for research questions. Specialists then ask, for example, how they can best visualize a certain operation.

biology book
According to Bas, the probability that people have seen drawings is quite high. “For example, I also drew for textbooks. For example, here I have a book for 3 MAVO and here you see a cross section of an earthworm. I found it all very interesting. »

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