I’m an artist, scientist, and writer. My goal is to educate the general public and spread what I know. I want to stop people from saying “Ew, that’s gross,” when they see something in the ocean or under a microscope, and get them saying, “Wow, that’s amazing.” My goal is to become a researcher and educator in a secondary education institution. I’d like to go back to an art school (like the one I went to as an undergraduate) and teach science to non-majors. My other goal is to produce quality illustrations that accurately capture the beauty, intricacy, and complexity of organisms and biological processes. I’m hoping to create a dissection guide to the major invertebrate phyla with the notes I’ve taken as a student and researcher.

Often when drawing live subjects, I start with many rough gesture drawings in vine charcoal of the shapes, smaller details and three dimensional structure of my subject. For many microscopic organisms, I’ll then do several illustrations in ink until I get one I’m happy with. When drawing from photographs or preserved specimens, I often work in graphite and move to pen. I strive to make accurate drawings of my dissections in particular because I feel that I should learn all I can from this organism’s death; I believe that once I’ve drawn the dissection, I should never need to dissect that organism again. I usually use color–either watercolor or colored pencil–in dissection drawings, when differentiating between the color of organs is important. I also have experience working in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to author digital media, though I usually do this for enjoyment or silly images rather than for biological illustrations.

My current work is mostly done in relation to my job as a researcher at a marine field station and my semi-daily journal and comic blog. I’m trying to explore the world around me, in particular the small things that most people aren’t looking for (the moths on my front porch, the earthworms on my way to work, the leaves of new plants). In my work I’m trying to do more painting and fine-tune my stippling abilities. I’m still trying to learn to draw the texture of a crab carapace or snail shell. I want to keep drawing things that challenge me but also educate and entrance my viewers. I believe the natural world should be appreciated, and feel a great way to bring this appreciation to the public is through well done illustrations that provoke thought and encourage critical thinking.