I used to love drawing and even painting on occasion but that gradually became eclipsed by my school/college and now university life as I got older. Since I wasn’t effortlessly amazing at drawing, it didn’t seem worth the time when there were much more ‘important’ things to focus on. I went down the STEM pathway in school, studying biology which I had always loved, collecting bugs for inspection from a young age and one of my prized possessions as a child being a miniature microscope. Looking back I think it only had a 10X objective, but still I thought it was brilliant!

During the first few weeks of lockdown, I spent my weekends coloring microbes, soil, and Sonoran Desert-themed drawings. In addition, I started following scientist who use art for #SciComm and science artists on social media. I was extremely inspired by Drs. Karen Vaughan and Yamina Pressler’s For The Love Of Soil art prints. Fortunately, I was able to attend a live session hosted by Dr. Pressler on how to create whimsical soil profiles using watercolors. There was no turning back from there.

As a kid, I could sit quietly for hours entertaining myself if I were handed a pen and a paper. Now as an adult, I still find myself doodling and sketching when I’m bored, or when I’m trying to explain something. Putting imaginations and thoughts into drawings is apparently a useful skill later in life, also as a scientist. Illustrating processes and how things work, even in the most basic form, is a useful science communication tool. 

To me, being able to visualize an organism helps me understand their nature better, and this is especially important for organisms that no longer exist in the present day. I am endlessly taking in information that helps me see the larger picture of a creature within its environment and how it interacts with and within it.

#DrawnToGeoscience is a series of posts by artists who draw about science and explain their process and inspiration while also showcasing their pieces. Learn more about contributing. This week, Carolyn Roberts. This post is adapted from a post in a sister blog here.  I’ve been studying terrestrial glaciers for a half dozen years now, and Spoiler Alert: they are melting! While seeing the demise of the cryosphere unfold before my eyes, …

*Google search: equipment needed to create a documentary.*

This is how my journey to creating The Monument began. In reality, it began before I made that search, in the months (that turned into years) of being rendered unable to shake a passion that gripped me—a passion to highlight and document the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, a hub for biodiversity in the western U.S., and to share its magnificence with the general public.

Art is a thing I was really into when I was younger; I was totally that kid who took art classes outside of school, drew on napkins (and myself), and doodled in the margins of all my notebooks. But then I went to college, got sucked into the wonderful world of science, and let drawing fall off my list of usual activities.

I was taking a break last winter from packing to go to sea aboard the JOIDES Resolution for Expedition 379 to Antarctica, scrolling through Twitter, when I saw the story of a fruitcake that had been left behind in 1911 by Sir Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition — and was deemed still edible.

#DrawnToGeoscience is a series of posts by artists who draw about science and explain their process and inspiration while also showcasing their pieces. Learn more about contributing. This week, Adam Swanson. This post is adapted from a post in a sister blog here.  Science and art are deeply related. Both involve looking hard at what is around us: taking time to observe and collect information to filter through brains. Art asks …

I am fascinated by the overlaps between art and science, which feel particularly salient within geoscience. This project, “dialogue: the earth talking,” grew out of my deep fascination with the intersections of art and geology, and the marks that humans generally, and I specifically, make on land.