Let me back it up a bit. I know I have a few non-academia readers (hi Momma, hey Dad) that may not be familiar with the research publishing process, including the difference between a review article and a research article. For them, I have made this little graphic:
Now, I was happy just to have the thing published at all, especially in such a cool, new journal. But then yesterday and this morning people started tweeting and re-tweeting about our article. Some lovely people even said that they liked the figures, and every time I read one of those particular tweets I just about melt out of happiness because I personally illustrated Figures 1, 2, and 4 (see below). As there are already some excellent sources for how and when to write a review article (see buttons), I decided to dedicate this week's blog post to my trials and efforts in making these illustrations.
Early on when Doug, PJ, and I were talking about ideas we had for this review article, we knew we wanted to make something table-esque that would sum up the entire review into one infographic. I actually have a picture of the white board from our first group discussion about the article, featured here on the left. We imagined that one column would depict examples of human behaviors and the second column would provide examples of documented morphological changes that have occurred because of those human behaviors. I was really excited about our idea to span the review over thousands of years of impactful human behaviors. |
I came up with the idea to create "cave paintings" for our illustrative needs. These ideas have now been successfully merged into Figure 1 (see above), but this was one interesting process for me.
The only painting I'd ever done before was some watercolor work for a Father's Day present and decorating some ceramic bowls for my cats (which are pretty cute if I say so myself, but are quite difficult to take pictures of).
The only painting I'd ever done before was some watercolor work for a Father's Day present and decorating some ceramic bowls for my cats (which are pretty cute if I say so myself, but are quite difficult to take pictures of).
I've included below for your viewing pleasure a small album consisting of "Honorable Mentions" that didn't make the paper, but that I am still quite proud of anyways, as well as a few of my favorite images that did :) Also featured in this album are the paints I used to get the job done (multisurface acrylics because that's what I had around after the cat bowl decorating bonanza; same goes for the Cansom Watercolor paper). I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have about the article or, if you ask me very nicely, to make a "cave painting" for you (mostly kidding on that one). Cheers!