David Goodsell's images have helped, over the last 30 years, thousands of students all over the world to imagine the cellular world by representing molecules, proteins, complexes, viruses, bacteria, and cellular processes. His contributions to the development of Molecular Graphics (MG) have been invaluable, and his retirement is the last (for now) of his kind acts: opening space for the next generation of scholars in the art and science of MG. Compared to the '90s, we have a much wider range of objects, places, processes and information that can serve as the basis for our images, and we also have many more tools for producing them, as demonstrated by the great work of thousands of scientist-artists, active as amateurs, as professional illustrators, or as members of dedicated institutional sections. Three decades of experience have produced a creative chaos that needs an organization effort, if it is to become "common background knowledge" not just for professionals of cellular and molecular biology, but for the wider scientific community.
Zoppè et al. (Mon,) studied this question.