Placing this on employers though is silly. The real problem is that there’s not enough people willing to pay for the product, not enough demand for it. I own a lot of cook books, I’ve seen plenty with wonderful illustrations. They are beautiful, but I’d never buy one, because they’re simply much less useful. A cook book with good pictures will help me with what I’m actually trying to do, which is learn how to cook new things.
You’re saying it requires an even greater level of photographic detail? If there was demand for this product in the market, then the profession wouldn’t be “endangered” (which is also a silly way of describing it, you can train a person to be a botanical illustrator. You can’t train a dog to be a panda).
No you’re completely missing the point. In cooking photos may be more useful than illustrations, but in botany it’s illustrations that are more useful. Therefore it’s on people that want illustrations to find talent not talent’s job to somehow know exactly what skills are required.
To use a related example, Walt Disney created a collage specifically to teach the skills he wanted animators to have. We don’t think in those terms, but complaining about a lack of qualified people just means you’re unwilling to train people.
I think you seem to be missing the point. Disney needed more artists than the market had in supply. Institutions dealing with botany have more illustrators than they need.
> Bobbi Angell, a botanical artist in Brattleboro, Vt., explains the shift: Floras are not commissioned as they once were; they are laborious and expensive undertakings, botanists retire and are not replaced, and much of plant taxonomy has shifted to the molecular level.
> “I get calls from young, aspiring artists, and it’s kind of hard to encourage them,” said Angell
The market clearly has a greatly diminished demand for these skills. It has nothing to do with unscrupulous employers, or lack of training. People just stopped buying what they were selling.
I am saying people don’t currently think in terms of a training pipeline. We have the idea that it’s up to employees to train themselves before getting the job. Thus potential illustrators contacting her and the expectation she should encourage them.
PS: As to the school, students need to pay to attend cal arts. It’s a clever cost saving means not an internal training program. They saved money even if none of the graduates worked for Disney it still increases supply.
I’m really not at all sure about what your point is supposed to be. The reason the profession is dying has nothing to do with training. It is entirely down to the fact that people stopped buying these products.
> We have the idea that it’s up to employees to train themselves before getting the job
Regardless of who does the training, it is most certainly up to the individual to acquire their own marketable skills if they wish to go out and market them. As long as there’s demand for those skills, there’ll be people willing to train in them. Employers may wish to initiate their own training programs, but they’ll only ever do that if they have a demand for labor that’s met with a shortage of supply. This is already commonplace in industries commonly that have apprenticeships or internships. But what are you expecting? Museums to start hiring apprentice botanical illustrators, so that when they’re properly trained they can look forward to having to transition into a different field because nobody has any demand for their newly learnt skills?
