Ocean Discovery Institute project

Right now I'm working on a project for the Ocean Discovery Institute here in San Diego, an organization that "uses science exploration to engage urban and diverse young people in three ways: education, scientific research and environmental stewardship". My job is to make visual aids that they can take into the classroom as part of the education arm. This is just a small thumbnail sketch for a 24x36" poster that is meant to describe how using electricity at home is linked to releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's part of a project students will do that involves them tracking their electricity use at home and making changes to reduce it. My next poster will probably describe "vampire electricity". Bit of a departure from my usual work, but an interesting project. And yes, I am aware that the light switch is twice the size of this kid's head. It's a thumbnail, okay??

I miss you, Command Z

I have never missed a deadline, but one of my clients has been very patient with me. He's used to it though, he's my Dad. About four years ago, I painted a landscape that he requested, but it was so large I had to check it when I flew home with it. That was the last I saw of that painting. I had very little motivation to do it again after the airline lost it, but Dad and I agreed on a barter about a year ago. He built a bookshelf that I requested (see awesome equation bookshelf below).

In return, I am repeating my original project.  Not to be foiled again, I am painting 5 (maybe 6) small paintings that I can ship easily or carry on the plane in one or two bundles.  Doing it this way opened up a possibility that I actually like better - the paintings comprise a panorama of the landscape, but each represents a different season and/or different time of the day.

I was glad to find some time recently to work on these, though it's been a while since I've picked up a paintbrush and I'm remembering how much harder it is to work without the ability to "undo" whenever I want. Oh, Command Z, how I've taken you for granted.



This is Anginex

Here's the final version of the image for the Functional Glycomics Gateway update, which I sent off on Monday. When I ran the draft by the writer of the piece for some feedback on Friday (see April 1st post), she loved it for its reminiscence of "80's metal" - an unintended but totally gnarly result.  We both agreed that that could be toned down a little, zooming in a little more on the binding site and shrinking the equilibrium arrows. I like it better this way, and now that it's done I can get down to the business of expanding my market to 80's metal tribute bands. Led Zepagain t-shirt anyone?

Chemistry Poetry Book is Out!!

Just under a year ago I was at the Miracle of Science (a bar in Cambridge, MA) with a couple of old grad school friends, telling them about my new science illustration business, when one of them said, "I should get you together with my friend Mala. She's looking for someone to illustrate her chemistry poetry". And thus started our nearly year-long adventure that has now culminated in the release of "Atomic Romances, Molecular Dances", a comprehensive collection of her hilarious and educational poems. I've added a gallery of all of the illustrations with excerpts to go with them here, and the book itself is available for purchase here. In a couple of months it will also be available from Amazon.com. For now it is available from the publisher directly, Lulu.com, at a discounted price ($11.21).

From sketches to a draft

Here's where I am on the illustration for the Functional Glycomics Gateway highlight (see last post). It's not due until the 5th so I think I'll chew on it over the weekend.

This is roughly the size at which it'll appear in the piece.  The hardest part was spending days doing the hand and eye-breaking work of perfecting the shading of the galectin-1 protein structures. All that time I spent learning how to draw shaded spheres has really paid off and I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

(Yes, you guessed it, I rendered Galectin-1 using VMD molecular visualization software*. There's your pitiful April fool's day prank.)

*Humphrey, W., Dalke, A. and Schulten, K., "VMD - Visual Molecular Dynamics" J. Molec. Graphics 1996, 14.1, 33-38.

 

How to draw what you don't know?

This afternoon I started working on an illustration to go with a research highlight for the Functional Glycomics Gateway newsletter, published by Nature Publishing Group in collaboration with the Consortium for Functional Glycomics. One of the articles they're highlighting this month is about an anti-angiogenic peptide called Anginex that binds to the galactose-binding lectin Galectin-1. Through an unknown mechanism, which the data suggests does not involve multivalency, this binding event leads to a several-fold increase in the binding affinity of Galectin-1 to its carbohydrate ligands. There is a crystal structure of Galectin-1, an NMR solution structure of Anginex, and a rough idea of where the peptide docks onto Galectin-1, but the details of the interaction, and how it affects carbohydrate binding, are still unknown.

So, how do I draw it? Well, simply, for starters, because it's only a small spot illustration. Above are some thumbnails I did while thinking through it. Since I don't know exactly where Anginex goes or in what orientation, I thought I'd try using typography to illustrate the effect it has on Galectin-1 binding. First I tried having it sort of wrap around the protein, ostensibly squeezing the lectin so that it would clamp down tighter on the carbohydrate. But that seemed too suggestive of a mechanism that is almost certainly not grounded in any sort of reality. Playing around with the letters I realized that the A in Anginex could be shaped into the head of an equilibrium arrow to show how the peptide perturbs the on/off equilibrium, a much more likely scenario. I'm all for using metaphors, but I do try to keep the misleading ones to a minimum.

Blast from the Past

I was going through some files and came across this image I made in July, 2006, using only Photoshop and the trackpad on my Macbook (I hadn't started using Illustrator yet). My postdoc advisor mentioned that it would be nice to have a figure depicting the system we were developing - heterobifunctional ligands that would bind to both a decavalent IgM antibody and the carbohydrate-binding cell surface receptor, CD22. Because CD22 engages its ligands with such low affinity, multivalency is needed to acheive stable binding. Subsequent to this figure, I made many cleaner variations using vector graphics in Illustrator, but my advisor refused to replace this one in his talks. To me, it represents the beginning of my serious consideration of actually doing science illustration for a living. Not only did I have a blast drawing it, I experienced first-hand the utility of trying to draw what you think is going on in the eppendorf tube. It forced me to really think about the relative concentrations of everything and how the receptors might cluster.  It led me to search the literature until I found out that the Fab fragments bend down as though on a hinge to engage their cognate antigens, as shown. Prior to that, we had been drawing the bound IgM as more of a tee-pee shape, or like the claw from that bowling alley game that theoretically retrieves stuffed teddy bears with the claw but is more likely to just trap a small child within its walls. Likewise with the projects I take on now, what I'd much rather hear than, "Ooh, it's lovely!" is, "By jove, I've never thought of it that way!".

Happy St. Patrick's Day...

...from this lucky leprechaun, blissfully unaware of the world's woes as he supervises a corned beef in the crock pot. This is not my artwork though.  My Grandpa O'Reilly handpainted this little guy, and many others, before perching them on tree branches in his yard that were so high up I could never understand how he got them there. Despite the precarious living arrangement, his only injuries were sustained much later at the hands of the USPS.

Careers in Chemistry

Today I'm looking forward to giving a talk to undergrads about careers in science illustration as part of the Chem Club's Careers in Chemistry series. This drawing is part of my "handy tips for any career" slide.

Expanding Horizons

This weekend a colleague and I will participate in Expanding Your Horizons, a program that encourages young women to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math. We are running an activity for 11-16 year olds that involves grinding up spinach leaves, extracting the organic molecules, and separating different colored pigment molecules using thin-layer chromatography. We made this handout to show them what they'll be looking at. This is how I imagine it going down. We explain to them that spinach is green because of all of these colorful molecules that are made by spinach plants. They say, "Wow! We see colors because of chemistry? That's awesome. But my physics teacher says that seeing colors is optics and that has to do with physics." "Nope," we say, "Your teacher doesn't know what he or she is talking about. Chemistry is all that matters." "Oh, okay. So do molecules like these make strawberries red, and blueberries blue?" "You bet!" We say. They get excited. The wheels start turning. One of them says, "If molecules make them look a certain way, are there molecules that make them taste a certain way, and feel a certain way?" "Yes, and yes." We say. Another one says, "Are there molecules in my t-shirt that make it this color?" "Yes, synthetic dyes are molecules!". Them: "Is chemistry everywhere?!?!"  Us: "It's everywhere!!!"  Them: "YOU ARE BLOWING OUR MINDS HOW CAN WE LEARN MORE?!?!?!?"   Us: "STUDY CHEMISTRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Or, something like that.

Modesty prevails and we close in on the finish line

Here's an update to the Jan 31st and Feb 16th posts. Slowly but surely I am managing to eke out enough time to finish up the final illustration asap. Most of this was done in airports, in the air, and at a Day's Inn in San Francisco where we stayed while visiting our new and unfathomably adorable 2-week old niece. Now I just need to finalize and clean it up. We are sooooo close to having the book out.

Low-budget animation on making salt

Untitled from Mary O'Reilly on Vimeo.

I made this quick animation for my chemistry students this week as a lead-in to talking about the Born-Haber cycle, which describes how much energy needs to be put in and how much is released when sodium chloride is made from sodium metal and chlorine gas. The YouTube video I showed of it actually happening is way cooler. I didn't bother trying to compete with that.

 

Wrapping up the week with icons

This week one of my biotech clients tasked me with replacing some icons for their website. They are rollover buttons to trigger the banner images I already made for them, which describe their cancer therapeutics, gold nanoparticle, and stem cell reagents programs. My only instructions were to make them a little more relevant than the ones they have now: a globe with an arrow around it, a desktop computer, and a magnifying glass.

Seeking subtlety in silicon

Today I've just started to digitize the sketch I posted on Jan. 31, since we've decided to go with this illustration for the chapter on selected elements in the chemistry poetry book. I'll stick fairly close to the sketch, but I am going to attempt to tone down the augmentation and make Sili's companion look a little less like she just left the Playboy mansion.

Let them have color!

This particular client is not a fan of color. I think that if there were glasses available that allowed the viewer to see the world in grayscale, she would be first in line to purchase a pair. In black. She was, in fact, the inspiration for the series of eucalyptus tree paintings I did. But her students have spoken, and they want color. So after a very long week I was really looking forward to sitting down and playing around with this. The website has a maroon and gold theme, based on the school colors, so I took the maroon and incorporated its split complement colors in various permutations. For some reason I thought it would be more fun to present some options in this Warhol screenprint-inspired format. If Marilyn Monroe were a cysteine-reactive protein.

Mmmm.... self-promotion

I am putting a full-page ad in the Association of Medical Illustrators' Medical Illustration Source Book, where many of the science illustrators that I admire also advertise. This morning I worked on the layout for it, but I am stuck. Little help, please?

Sili gets the last laugh

Okay, I know I said the chemistry poetry book was done. But now that we've gotten the proofs and realize that some little things will need to be changed, I am considering replacing one of the illustrations. This is just a rough sketch I did today to get some ideas down. The poem, written of course by Mala Radhakrishnan, is about an atom of Silicon named Sili, who is teased relentlessly in school because, being neither metal nor non-metal, he was having trouble fitting in.

"

Though like a metal (it was quite shiny),

Its conductivity was tiny.

Its band gap was too far from little,

And unlike metals, ’twas rather brittle.

 

It clutched electrons way too tightly,

So metals would tease it daily and nightly.

Yet nons would also jeer and nettle,

“You dress and look just like a metal!”


What pain ’cause it did not conform,

No box for it to check on forms.

Few others could know the lonely void

That it lived as a “metalloid.”

"

Of course, he eventually proves to be very useful indeed, and everyone loves him...

"

And nowadays, sili’s still lionized.

Its band gap equals a perfect size

To dope with nearby brothers and sisters

And make computers from transistors.

 

As if its utility has not yet impressed us,

It’s also in quartz and in glass and asbestos.

And silicon’s used in chemical plants

For lubricants and breast implants.

 

Sili, its fourteen electrons so strong,

Proved all of its skeptical peers to be wrong

When it managed to move all the way out to Cali

And founded its very own aptly-named valley.

"

With this illustration I tried to incorporate as many silicon-containing materials as I could, including a computer, a quartz watch, solar panels, a car, glass, bluetooth device, and some, shall we say, augmentation. (Obviously I'm talking about Sili's calves.)