Reticular Theory

I try to start every year with a good ‘old-fashioned’ neuron drawing, just to remind myself of my origins. Here is what I have been working on in January:

This ended up being more abstract than my usual drawings so I named it Reticular Theory, a now obsolete belief that cells in the nervous system are fused together into a single continuous network – pioneered by Nobel laureate Camillo Golgi.

Consider it a reminder that even the best scientists sometimes get things wrong, and we don’t need to sweep that under the carpet. Science is an endless project. Our most popular theories may someday look ridiculous. It’s OK to change our mind.

Happy 2024 everyone. 🧠

Entangled Life Comic

I want to start the new year with a ‘failed’ project, for a change.

Around this time last year, I was working on these 4 test pages, for a graphic adaptation of Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, which I was pitching with a publisher. Nothing came out of it but I still think this is a book that would be fun to draw. Most importantly I still like these pages, and I hope they may lead more people to pick up the original book. It’s one of my favorite science books of recent years.

May new ideas sprout from dead projects, like mushrooms on a log! 🍄

What Can You Be With a PhD?

I had the pleasure of working on a new banner, a series of spot illustrations, and even a new logo for this year’s What Can You Be With A PhD? conference.

This project spoke to me at a very personal level. I finished my PhD in neuroscience at the age of 28 and I had never seriously considered any path outside of academia. It took me many years (and a lot of luck) to build a career in illustration. I could have used an event like this!

I wish we had more open and honest conversations about career options for PhDs. I know this is a time of job applications, frustration, and uncertainty. Good luck everyone

Science Comics Summer

Just a few years ago I was giving talks trying to convince scientists that comics could be an ideal format to communicate their research. Now, it looks like there aren’t many people left to convince! The reason for my long silence here is that this Summer I have received 3 independent commissions for nonfiction comics. Let me use this space to tell you a bit more about them:

• Academy of Science Hamburg – this German institution actually has already commissioned me 2 comic ‘posters’ one about neuroinflammation with Charlotte Schubert and the latest one about Alex Steen‘s work on Automated Reasoning, which was definitively new territory for me.

• University of California Merced – as part of their amazing Bobcat comics series I have worked on a comic with Dalia Magaña comparing ‘war’ and ‘journey’ metaphors in cancer discourse, and another comic for Meredith Van Natta on the Medical Legal Violence that uninsured people (especially immigrants) have to face in order to access healthcare in the US. These are both such important projects, that touch on so many things close to my heart (metaphors, medicine, and social justice) and I really enjoyed workshopping visual metaphors with these thinkers. If you’re local I’m also flying there for a panel on November 14.

• NIH CARD – I still can’t reveal much about this project but suffice it to say that it was written in collaboration with the amazing Paige Jarreu and it’s meant as a short introduction to research into genetic markers of neurodegeneration (not an easy subject to summarize, since it spans so many scales).

I am delighted that I’m finally getting commissions for non-fiction comics. For most of my career, illustration/animation has been my main source of income, and comics remained mostly a personal passion project.

This whole experience reminded me how much I love this medium, and I believe that comics can do even more than make science fun and accessible. The combination of words and pictures can help us visualize complex ideas and structure our thinking in deeper ways. I really want to push myself to go beyond communication and to do some more graphic scholarship.

In particular, there is a book that I have been slowly writing over the years, and I think it’s finally time for me to start drawing it. I am thinking of serializing the first few chapters on my Patreon (which has been very dormant so far). Sign up now if you want to follow along!

Bycicle Day

In honor of Bicycle Day, I have illustrated one of my favorite quotes from psychedelics advocate Timothy Leary. I just love this microscope metaphor!

Enjoy 🌈

Milkweed

It has been a long Winter here in Woodstock, NY.

Just this past weekend the land has been covered in a fresh coat of snow. In times like these it is hard to find the right subject (not to mention the motivation) to keep up my practice of nature drawing. But I have finally took some time to draw these dried milkweed pods which I was admiring a couple of months ago in the Thorn preserve (one of my favorite local parks).

So many botanical illustrations try to capture the bounty of Spring and Summer. I think it is interesting to notice what is left in the Winter. Even in these contorted shapes I find great beauty, After all these are the seeds from which new meadows will start to grow soon.

Here are some of the preparatory sketches and the original samples:

Myelin

Thankful for my support network.

My latest illustration depicts Myelin, the insulating layer of fat that wraps around the axons of neurons (here depicted in pink). Just like the plastic tubes around the wires in your house, myelin allows electric signals to travel inside these cells for long distances, without dissipating.

In the brain, myelin sheaths are formed by oligodendrocytes, a type of glial cells that wrap around multiple axons at the same time, forming a complex network on top of an already staggering complex network of neurons.

Oligodendrocyte – artwork by Holly Fischer 
http://open.umich.edu/education/med/resources/second-look-series/materials

My goal here was simply to pay tribute to these ‘support’ cells that are too often overlooked. Both neurons and oligodendrocytes are still incredibly simplified in my drawing (neurons don’t have any dendrites for one) but I hope it gives a sense of how intricate – and beautiful! – the brain can be.

This illustration was heavily influenced by the work of William Morris, of course, although mine is not a repeating pattern like his. I have been a big fan of his work and philosophy since visiting the William Morris Gallery, while working on my PhD in London.

“any decoration is futile…
when it does not remind you of something beyond itself.”

William Morris

William Morris, Pink and Rose, ca. 1890

Mushroom Empire

I have been working on this for months! It’s my most extensive nature drawing to date (19×24 inches) and the second one that features mushrooms. Please don’t ask me what the species are, I’m not an expert and this is not meant to be scientific (most of these species would probably never grow in the same place). This is just meant as an homage to these beautiful organisms.

As usual, below you can see some of my reference pictures and preparatory sketches.

Backyard

Since July I have been trying to capture the magic of fireflies on a Summer evening and finally, this month while sitting in my backyard, I came up with this illustration. It’s also the official portrait of my house in Woodstock, NY. I hope you like it!

As usual, here are a few reference sketches, because even when drawing my background I have tried to do keep up my practice of observational drawing and document some of the grasses that grow here. I haven’t bothered identifying them but it made me really appreciate the beauty and biodiversity of an ‘unkept’ yard.

You can keep your land mowers!

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Minerals

This mineral composition is inspired by some chromolithographs from Meyers Konversations-Lexicon encyclopedia (1893), as seen in the Romance of Books account (a real goldmine of vintage science illustrations – seriously, follow them!)

You may have noticed that I usually prefer to draw living things – maybe that’s my biologist training showing – but in these troubling times, I found copying rocks and minerals very comforting.

Not that I believe minerals have any special powers. I just love the idea of rocks slowly morphing into gems deep within the Earth, untouched by human troubles. They existed for millions of years, long before life even appeared and they will keep going long after we are gone.

Hope you like them!