The pen is mightier than the camera

Why would anyone involved in the sciences resort to drawing by hand? In this era of digital photography, which generates high-resolution images that can be manipulated at will, and of devices such as electron microscopes that can be set up to see and represent an object without fallible human intervention, why use such an apparently outmoded technique?

The answer is that the act of accurate drawing is still the best way to guarantee intense looking on the part of the artist, and, in terms of communication with the viewer, it provides a visual language of unprecedented focus, directness and dynamism. A drawing can transcend temporal limitations in a way that no other static image can. Data from different stages in a process or procedure can be overlaid yet remain clear, and anyone witnessing the making of the drawing can be taken step-by-step through what is being demonstrated.

Any artist who draws, or anyone who has sat for a drawn portrait, will not need telling that drawing involves the most intense visual concentration. It is a way of “learning how to see”, to quote the first president of the Royal Academy, Joshua Reynolds. It is appropriate that when David Hockney and Allen Jones, former enfants terribles of the 1960s, were asked to organize a section devoted to drawing at this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, they decided to include examples from outside Fine Art.

The drawings that have created the greatest stir — and won a prize — are by the heart surgeon Francis Wells of Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, UK. The example shown here illustrates the repair of a post-myocardial infarction ventricular septal defect. Wells explains that it illustrates “the incision in the left ventricle to get access to the ventricular cavities, the relationship of the papillary muscles and the underside of the atrioventricular valves, the lesions involved, in this case a hole in the septum, the placement of the sutures for the introduction of the patch to close the defect and the patch in place. Finally, the sutures necessary to close the incision are also shown.”

The circumstances of its creation explain the impulsive character of the drawn line. This picture was drawn after the operation, over a cup of coffee in the surgeon's room, to explain the procedure to visiting and trainee surgeons. The speed and weight of line and the selective hatching are integral to the act of emphatic communication, picking out exactly what is essential, filtering out all the visual clutter that would be generated in a photograph or video. Even for someone who has not seen the drawing being made, the sense of the motion of the draughtsman's hand, in accordance with the flow of his ideas, is clear, just as it would be in a rapid sketch by Hockney or Jones. Indeed, Wells' sketch shares notable affinities with Hockney's drawings, especially those of the 1960s.

Wells himself is fully conscious of the special quality of the act of communicative drawing in time and place: “Having just completed the operation, drawing one's thoughts feels like an extension of the operation with the hand–eye interworking.” This demonstrates “the superiority of drawing over other means of visual record, as it is a process of communicating thought and ideas as composed in the mind without the constraints of any equipment limitations.”

It is interesting to witness moves to reintroduce drawing into the teaching of sciences and technologies. As Wells says, drawing is “powerful in teaching and can enhance explanation — acting out the move ... through the use of line. I feel this is very like the cognitive process in the artist, who will look and look before committing a line to paper.”

The drawings are on show at the Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in London until 16 August.