From Lab to Studio: A Scientist’s Journey to Becoming a Self-Taught Illustrator
Both science and art are very strong passions for anyone who pursues either of them. Although academic education is mandatory for a scientific career, art can be self-taught.
I am a PhD candidate in Immunology working 9–5 at a university as a scientist with lots of academic duties. Even though art has been in my life ever since my childhood, turning it into a part of my career was way back when I was doing my Master’s in 2017.
Back then, I was already working as a freelance translator, copy writer, and academic writing editor. Later on, I taught myself graphic design and web design, and started getting design works as a freelancer as well.
Then, my business partner, and also my sister, and I founded an art and design brand which included our own art and design products like art prints, postcards, stickers, calendars, and etc. I was making the art and my sister was dealing with everything that goes to print.
This brand became a 2-year project for us because we stopped it when we started our PhD. Nevertheless, I couldn’t stop making art but this time it was every once in a while with my full-time job.
Being a part-time creative
This was where I treated being a creator as a part-time occupation because I wanted it to be in my future life as well.
Therefore, creating regularly became mandatory for me but it was one of the things in my life that I enjoyed the obligation even more than science and definitely academia.
During this period of time, I discovered my passion for digital art rather than traditional art which I used to make most of my art with watercolor and gouache until I got Procreate on my iPad. My creative process completely changed in terms of my expectations from my art and the media I used.
I started using Procreate with my iPad and Apple Pencil. Moreover, I was already using Adobe illustrator for my previous design business, but this time I started using it to create my scientific illustrations I made for scientific papers for publication.
As a self-taught designer and illustrator, teaching myself different tools has been one of the most valuable skill itself, but creating personal projects along the way using those tools with my creative perspective has been a way of creating new professions already.
My creative explorations with my art goes in two ways now
One, I make digital arts inspired by my street photographs including mostly scenes from streets and buildings I take as a street photographer.
As I mentioned earlier, I used to make those kind of art before with watercolor and gouache to create my prints, postcards, stickers, and very different kinds of products.
Now, I am mostly focusing on only creating the art itself instead of turning them into products to sell. My objective has changed in the long term. Creating pieces for my digital art portfolio is the main goal, yet I want to grow my social media presence as a digital artist.
Other one is creating a career that combines my scientific knowledge with my artistic skills which is called scientific communication.
One day in 2021, I decided to create the scientific figures of my own review manuscript for publication that I had written and it was published with my own figure I created using Adobe illustrator.
The article was about adoptive T cell therapies for COVID-19 and my figures successfully represented the types of therapies that are existed and the methodologies to be used to generate them.
After some research, I realized that this would be a career that I can be good at.
Contents I am going to share here
This all means I will be creating, documenting, and sharing my experiences along the way as a creator like I have already been doing during all those years, but this time this platform, Medium, is going to be a new space for my contents.
I like to share my perspective and experiences that I have had along the way and struggles I have been through as I’ve learned so many things from the other creators and their creative explorations on my way which I appreciate a lot.
So, here I am Merve known as mervedemisken on Instagram. As a full-time scientist and part-time illustrator, I share my self-learning process and my personal experiences on being a self-taught illustrator along the way of starting a new career.
Every month, I will be sharing a Medium article that will include my personal explorations and learning process. Thank you for reading and join me here on this adventure!
