my science illustrations
some of my illustrations of scientific matters -- loosely defined.
tubular cells
When my friend Claudia Vásquez left from Stanford to start her lab at University of Washington, studying how simple epithelial shapes like folds and tubes further organize in 3D into more complex shapes, I painted for her a cartoon of her model system of interest, the Drosophlia Malpighian tubule cells.
watercolor on paper
cover art
I made this cover for my colleague Matthew Swaffer, illustrating the gradient of scaling behaviors we see for various proteins in yeast: some proteins are diluted as cells grow (subscaling), while some proteins accumulate in larger cells (superscaling).
watercolor on paper
portraits of scientific equipment
Since the Skotheim lab used a variety of methods and model systems to study cell size, the equipment we used tended to be quite different. The one item that united us all, however, was the humble Coulter counter, a machine that does two things exceedingly well: count cells and measure their volume. I painted a portrait of our resident Coulter counter, alongside its trusted friend, the blue maintenance solution that we all called "blue stuff." These images eventually were made into a Skotheim lab hoodie.
watercolor on paper