Crayons, please?

Since I was thinking about the project I had lined up for the weekend, I did this rough sketch on a white board at husband's workplace while waiting for him to finish up on Friday evening. So, apparently I am seven. On the bright side, I did not get fussy.

Cover Me!

I'm about to submit a manuscript to a journal that invites authors to send in possible cover art with initial submission of the manuscript. Here's a mock-up. I took into account the placement of the title, which is why there's some empty space. I'll be happy just to have the paper accepted, but wouldn't mind getting the cover too! It's about our discovery that the cell surface receptor CD22 recycles back to the cell surface after endocytosis, and that it differentially transports cargo into the cell, depending on the cargo. Fingers crossed!

Brushing up on a different medium

Sorry, I couldn't resist the punny title. This weekend I've been playing around with using pen and ink with an ink wash on watercolor paper for some illustrations.  Here are a couple of prototypes in progress.

Tribute to Husband

It's about time I give some credit to the source of many of the human forms I use in my drawings - my husband. He's always willing when I need to snap a reference photo to capture a pose, or even just an ear, like this:

He doesn't even ask what it's for, he's just happy to help. The best part is, he's funny. When I asked him to help me simulate the heimlich manuever, I had no idea that he was going to look straight into the camera with such a look of deep concern. I laughed the entire time I drew this:

Sometimes he requests that I change his appearance so that he is not recognizable, and I oblige.

Whether it's for a column in the AWIS magazine

or an assignment for my graphic design class

he never complains. As if it weren't enough that he is extraordinarily supportive of my "alternate career" or "career away from the bench" or whatever the kids are calling it these days, he is always behind the scenes with a keen eye for design. He is the one who reins me in when I want to write a line of text in the shape of an elephant just because I learned how to use the type on path tool in Illustrator. Plus, he knows all of the lyrics to Pinball Wizard. I'm a lucky lady, I am.

A Few Good Women

Here's an infographic I made yesterday for the next issue of the Association for Women in Science's quarterly magazine, the theme of which is Leadership. The statistics come from articles going into the issue, and are meant to highlight the relative dearth of female role models in leadership positions. I suppose I must be one of the lucky ones, because I have had no shortage of outstanding female role models throughout my entire training. 

Perspective on glycan arrays

I put this figure together this week for a review being published from my lab about glycan arrays. They wanted to convey that a wide variety of glycans is spotted on the array, and also that each spot displays a multivalent presentation of these glycans. Multivalency is important to capture the glycan-binding proteins (right) and viruses (left) that are routinely screened by this method. This was also an attempt to conform to the style of the journal to which it's going. You know, so I'm like versatile and stuff. But mostly I enjoyed invoking the old 1-point perspective lines, which always reminds me of my 6th grade art class, where we drew our names in block letters and then used 1-point perspective to make them 3D. It blew my 11-year old mind.

Masked microbes

Some pathogenic bacteria have a clever strategy for evading our innate immune system - make themselves look like our red blood cells. Our immune system has been programmed to not attack our own cells, for obvious reasons. These wily bacteria come decorated with our blood group antigens (the carbohydrates that govern our blood type). The illustration below shows their attempted masquerade. But the Cummings group has found that we may be one step ahead. In Stowell SR, et al. “Innate immune lectins kill bacteria expressing blood group antigen.”  Nature Med. 2010 16, 295-301, they show that we express two isoforms of the glycan-binding protein known as galectin to kill the bacteria by recognizing the blood group antigen. Presumably, by selectively expressing them in the intestinal epithelium, they won't bother our red blood cells. 

 

My Mini-Muse

My best friend has a 3-year old daughter. I was in the hospital when she was born. I held her as she looked up at me with gooey little eyes. So overcome with adoration was I, that I decided to paint a portrait of her for each of her birthdays. I realize now that it may be somewhat ambitious, that she may not want a stack of portaits of herself. I don't even like seeing photos of myself from the "awkward stage" (roughly ages 7-23, in my case). But for now, while she is fast growing, unbearably cute, and wonderfully expressive, I am working on the third painting in the series. Here it is at an early stage.

Finding Amino

Here is a rough sketch of another chemistry poem illustration in the works. The poem is about a very distraught protein looking for its lost N-terminal glycine residue, named Amino.

Here is a logo and graphic that I put together for my friend Nicole's blog, The Concentric Circle, which launched this week. She is an extremely talented journalist who now spends her days editing other people's writing.  Like the professor who yearns to do experiments with his or her own hands again, Nicole felt an urge to get back to writing, and thank goodness for that. It is an absolute joy to read.

The Original Heidelberg Monster

I recently had the opportunity to visit a printing company in San Diego. I learned how terribly things can go wrong when preparing files for print and how the nice employees will feel about me when it happens. I imagined that they keep this old Heidelberg printing press (see photo) for the express purpose of feeding it designers who don't know the difference between CMYK and RGB, or don't manage their fonts properly. I had at least three panic attacks as it just so happened that one of my projects had just been sent to the printer and my client was awaiting the proof.  I saw my fate in the second photo below if the file wasn't prepared properly.

There once was an atom of tin . . .

I've recently embarked on a very exciting collaboration with a classmate from MIT - to illustrate her chemistry poetry.  Just to get the ball rolling, I took a stab at one of my favorites. Here is a draft. The poem is about a tin atom trying to get into Club Atomic. The snooty bouncer explains that elements are admitted by the gram, and letting him in would exceed the tin allowance. Tin explains that this gives an unfair advantage to the lighter elements, such as the helium atoms filing in, and he finally convinces the bouncer that elements should be admitted by moles, or number of atoms, not by weight. 

Flash for Splash?

I made this animation (click to enlarge) with plans to use it as my splash page, but am hesitant to leave any iPhone and iPad users to only encounter the rather unwelcoming "Get Adobe Flash Player" button as a first impression. What does the future hold for Flash??

Get Adobe Flash player

Barney 1998-2010

After 18 months of living on love and subcutaneous fluid injections, my faithful companion of 12 years succumbed to chronic renal failure. He will be sorely missed.

800 mg of Clarity

Here's a logo I designed in a graphic design course I'm taking. It's for a fictional company that makes drugs to enhance mental clarity and focus. How nice! I'll stick to coffee though.

Like a Tokyo Wave Pool

This is a work-in-progress, which ultimately will be a poster for a biotech company. It doesn't look too crowded yet, but will be packed to the gills when it's done. Another interesting design problem. But it's a nice reminder that, as was pointed out in a seminar I saw yesterday, the components populating the inside of a cell are less like synchronized swimmers, and more like a Tokyo wave pool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inA-36YRV0Y

Non-Science Illustration Break

As the Wall Street reform bill moves through Congress, it seems a good excuse to post this drawing that I did as an assignment for my illustration class (with real pen and paper!).  The task was to incorporate a fictional character (here, Alice in Wonderland's Red Queen) into a current event.