I had the pleasure of working on a new banner, a series of spot illustrations, and even a new logo for this year’sWhat 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
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!
I grew up in Bologna, a city where science and art merge in many strange ways. At university, many of my classes took place in old anatomical theaters, next to dusty zoology collections which I often stopped to explore (and sketch). These settings clearly had a lot of influence on my art.
When people ask me for my favorite artist, my hometown naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi is certainly up there in the pantheon of weird science illustrators (next to Maria Sibylla Merian and Ernest Haeckel). The weird creatures collected in his 1642 book Monstrorum Historia are an endless source of inspiration. In particular, I have always been fascinated by this strange ‘deer with numerous antlers’ which looks halfway between a grotesque unicorn and a stag with a party hat.
This month I took some time to retrace it and add a bit of color. It was a really fun process and I’m thinking of doing more of these public domain science ‘remixes’ – let me know if you have any requests!
If you know me, you have probably noticed I’m endlessly fascinated by scientific metaphors. I love to think of how they may shape scientific understanding and public perception of science.
This illustration was inspired by a metaphor I have read in Losing Eden by Lucy Jones (attributed to the environmentalist Paul Shepard):
“We imagine our skin and our bodies to be an armor, or a shell, impenetrable to the outdoors. But the human epidermis is more like a pond surface, or a forest soil.”
I found it quite beautiful, and also very useful. It encourages us to stop thinking of human bodies as ‘machines’ that can somehow be maintained independently from the rest of the natural world. Instead, each one of us is a complex ecosystem, populated by hundreds of different species which both rely on us, and on which we rely. As we are learning, our skin is a very porous boundary.
On a technical note: this was done entirely in Procreate, based on an early sketch on paper. Not sure I like this style but I’m trying to work without thick black outlines for once.
Early on during the pandemic I learnt about Mary Wortley Montagu, who pioneered variolation in England (inoculating her own son) after observing the practice in Turkey. This was almost 80 years before Edward Jenner, who I have always been taught was the ‘inventor’ of the cowpox vaccine. Yet another case of women being overlooked or deliberately written out of the history of science.
It was too late to include her in the Massive Science Tarot, but I decided to draw her portrait nonetheless. Dan Samorodnitsky wrote her story for Massive. Unfortunately, her views on slavery were not as enlightened, but I still hope she can provides some hope in these difficult times. May we defeat COVID soon and get back to fighting more important battles.
The relaunch issue of Science for the People magazine is amongst us! It’s printed and being shipped to our Kickstarter supporter as I write this, so I can finally share my cover illustration (and there is more in the inside).
It was a daunting task to choose an image for the cover. The topics covered within the issue are so varied and all seem so important which didn’t feel right to pick one for the cover. I opted instead for a celebratory illustration, which tries to capture the spirit of revitalization with an explosion of different flowers/ideas. I imagined the seeds of radical science laying dormant in offices, laboratories and classrooms around the world for decades, and I hope this magazine will be a platform for them to grow and pollinate each others.
You’re still in time to get your own copy (and future issues as well) by subscribing to the magazine. And if you are an illustrator interested in working for us please let me know, I’m still looking for for contributors for the next issue ‘The Science We Need’.
PS: Also, I still haven’t received my deck, but you can start to see pictures of the Massive#sciencetarot online and they look great! These are the two main project that kept me busy last year so it’s great to see them coming to fruition.
This month, after more than 2 years since I illustrated the 1st card I have finally finished the Massive Science Tarot deck. It has been quite a journey, and I have discovered so many amazing scientists along the way! It’s definitely one of the projects I’m most proud of (on the same level as my books) and I can’t wait to see it printed in June.
The World represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle beginning with the fool. It is an indicator of a major and inexorable change, of tectonic breadth.
In our Science Tarot The World depicts a futuristic woman crossing a circular wreath of DNA, looking behind her to the past, while her body moves forward to the future. In her hands are scientific tools which she uses to read and modify her own genome. It represents the potential of humans to take control of their own evolution (for good or for worse).
Quick illustration to celebrate the return to publishing of Science for the People magazine. After the Geoengineering special issue, 30 years after the last issue (Volume 21, Number 2) we are planning to officially re-launch the historic magazine in the Spring of 2019 and we’re looking for submissions!
Send us your proposal by Monday, January 14. We accept proposals for features, opinions, book and media reviews, and artwork. Please keep proposals to 300 words and image uploads to 20 mb total.
Also, I’m acting as art director for the next issue, so if you don’t have a proposal but you are an illustrator interested in doing some pro-bono work on topics of science, engineering or political organising, shoot me an email. For now we are all volunteers working on this on a zero-budget, but the plan is to make this a beautiful sustainable magazine and I’m putting together a roster of potential collaborators.
Earlier this month the kickstarter run by Massive Science to produce a Women of Science Tarot Deck (illustrated by yours truly) was successfully funded! This means that for the rest of the Winter I’m going to spend most of my weekends drawing science-themed symbolic illustrations, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Now, some of you may ask (and have asked) “why are you mixing science and tarot? Isn’t Tarot all about magic/occult stuff?” Initially, when my friend Nadja suggested the idea I asked myself the same question. Like most people I associated ‘tarots’ with divination but – as I have later learnt – the tarot actually started as a playing cards deck, used since the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe. In fact, in Italy we still use the 4 tarot suits (spades, wands, coins and cups) as regular playing cards, without any magical associations. Only later, in the 18th century, the tarot cards began to be used for divination and magic.
Part of me is just really excited about updating this ancient tradition for our modern scientific culture. After all, the cards meaning evolved throughout history and I don’t see why we shouldn’t be allowed to do it once more. But, as a science communicator, I also think this is a great opportunity to reach a whole new audience. In particular, I have been thinking a lot lately about how scientists should engage with spirituality (especially after reading this fascinating comic by Jordan Collver and watching this conversation on Stated Casually). I grew up atheist (or religious-free, as I prefer to say) and I always had a pretty aggressive attitude toward any spiritual beliefs. But I now understand the value of a more neutral/grey zone (or ‘decompression chambers‘ to use Jon Perry’s beautiful metaphor). If we require people to reject their whole spiritual identity in order to even start reading about science then we are excluding a whole LOT of readers! A more inclusive science communication should provide some in-between spaces where people feel comfortable exploring science, without feeling immediately challenged or attacked.
I really hope that a science Tarot could play this kind role: a space for people who do not traditionally identify as ‘science geeks’ to engage with scientific concepts in a playful and non-judgemental way. And also, a good opportunity to challenge some stereotypes of what science ‘should be’ and what scientists ‘look like’ by celebrating the pioneering women scientists included in the deck.
Matteo Farinella Blog 