126. Science Illustration, AI Cardinals, and Frozen Asters w/ J. Spahr

What's up, Plant People?? On today's episode, I chatted with scientific illustrator, J Spahr of @Science_Visuals to unpack how art turns complex research into clear, accurate stories that spark curiosity. From watercolor botanicals to layered digital paintings and ecosystems in one frame, we explore process, ethics, and impact.

• the path from a found textbook to a science illustration career
• Europe’s legacy of artists working with scientists
• art as storytelling and science communication
• choosing mediums and building layered digital workflows
• designing infographics that condense seasons, species, and behavior
• client collaboration, revisions, and scientific accuracy
• social media’s trade-offs and unexpected reach
• why AI images miss context, accuracy, and trust
• the joy of learning fast through research illustration
• practical plant science: why asters shrug off frost

Make sure to follow J on Instagram and check out her website at scivisuals.com!

If you'd like to support the show, leave a rating and review, email planthropologypod@gmail.com, find me all over the place on social media, snag merch at planthropologypodcast.com, or buymeacoffee.com/planthropology

Chapters

• 0:00 Host Welcome & Topic Reveal
• 2:55 Jay’s Path To Scientific Illustration
• 8:45 Europe’s Tradition Of Science Art
• 12:50 Art As Storytelling And Public Outreach
• 17:50 Mediums, Process, And Layered Workflows
• 24:20 Building Effective Infographics
• 29:40 Client Workflow, Revisions, And Accuracy
• 35:20 Mid-Roll & Support The Show
• 37:00 Social Media: Reach, Costs, And Strategy
• 45:10 Measuring Impact Beyond The Gallery
• 50:10 The AI Debate: Accuracy And Trust
• 58:20 Why Human Judgment Still Matters

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

What is up, plant people? It's time once more for the Planthropology Podcast, the show where we dive into the lives and careers of some very cool plant people to figure out why they do what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Victor Imbaliga, your host, and your humble guide in this journey through the sciences. And as always, my friends, I'm so gosh darn ding dang excited to be with you today. I am finally getting to cover on this show a topic that I've wanted to have for a long time, and a guest that I've wanted to have for a long time. So if you know me and if you follow me on social media, I am not a great artist, right? I have doodled a few doodles, and I have my students doodle animal doodles every semester, and I can't judge them very hard on it, because it is not not my thing. I am not creative in that way. And if you know that I wrote a children's book, Plants to the Rescue, this is a shameless plug, and I'm not sorry. The process of getting that illustration done, I obviously didn't illustrate. But I would talk ramblingly about, maybe like I'm doing right now, what I wanted it to look like. And this illustrator would go in and just like blow my mind. It'd be like, oh yeah, I took your abjectly uh uh chaotic thoughts and translated them into visual media. My guest today is an absolute expert at that, at taking complex scientific concepts and illustrating them and displaying them visually. So I got connected with Jay Spar um from Science Visuals a while back on social media. She has worked with some different groups like the Native Habitat Project and some different things to develop media and t-shirt designs and things like that. And I love her work. Y'all I I I don't know how to like properly describe how good her work is. And I'll link to her website and her portfolio in the in the show notes, and you need to go look at it. But Jay and I started talking about having her on the show a while back, and because of life, we're finally getting it done. And y'all, she's so great. She's so great. You know, I I've talked about this before, I think, but it is such a wonderful thing to to follow someone and admire what someone does online and in their careers, and then to get to talk to them and find out that they're just as much of a delight and much as much of a wonderful human being as you expected. So Jay and I talked about everything from the impact of AI on art communities and on scientific understanding and the way we represent that through art and through discussion. We talked about the creative process that goes into doing science illustration, whether that be for a textbook or a science center or for whatever else we talked about, life and curiosity, and so many things. And y'all, you are going to love this episode. And I would also encourage you to make sure you stay around till the end, because there is like a bonus little thing at the end that we almost forgot about, and I'm glad we got to throw in there. So you'll you'll see. You'll see. So now I'm gonna stop blabbering and I'm gonna encourage you to go grab a pencil and some watercolors and to doodle while you listen to this episode and to learn all of the amazing things that go into science illustration with J Spar. I would love to give you the chance to introduce yourself a little bit. We were talking before we got on about how that's an interesting experience, especially if you do this a bunch, like introducing yourself over and over again. But I'm gonna make you introduce yourself one more time. So tell us about you. What's your background? What did you study? What are you into? You know, you have an interesting, really, I think, diverse resume. And I think that it'll be super interesting for our listeners to hear. So I'll turn it over and tell us all about Jay.

SPEAKER_02: 4:05

Yeah, it is a broad spectrum of interests, I guess, from my career to how I started the with the to become a scientific illustrator. So I'm a professional scientific illustrator. I work full-time freelance, I work for science centers, I work for publishers, I work for research facilities, universities, and I do illustrations kind of in two separate veins. It's either scientific illustrations for public outreach, or it's scientific illustrations for research that's sharing research with usually other researchers through journals, but sometimes also we're hoping that will be public outreach information too. So when I was little, I was always playing outside, being a curious New Englander who had access to trees right behind my house and miles of trails and stuff. And then I went to college and I got a degree in art history because my dad told me they would only help me pay for college if I didn't get a studio art degree. So it was an agreement.

SPEAKER_01: 5:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 5:16

And so, and if I and he said if I ever wanted to work in a museum, that would be more beneficial. And then at the same time, I got a degree in global environmental studies. And so those two things, when I was in college, people were sort of like, this is kind of a weird, like in two different, completely different directions. And then when I finished college, I was completely lost. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. I started working full-time as the assistant for a sculpture working for her. And meanwhile, I was feeling really not very fulfilled. I was spending all of my time when I wasn't working, making my own stencils and printing them of endangered species and designs like that online. And then one day I was at my town garbage dump, believe it or not, because in New England you still have to bring your trash to the dump every week. Yeah. So I was at the dump, and there was an anatomy and physiology textbook that was in a pile of trash. And I picked it up and started flipping through it. And obviously, I had taken biology classes and stuff before, but something clicked in my mind that made me think, oh, is this actually a potential career to be the person who makes the illustrations in this? And I went home, I started creating a big kind of illustration of my own brain with all different anatomical structures in it. And fast forward two years, I got a master's degree in scientific illustration in the Netherlands. I chose that program specifically because it wasn't all medical illustration. We all got to do botanical illustrations and we got to do lots of animal anatomy and human anatomy all together. And then I got back to the US and started working freelance for the clients that I was kind of explaining at the beginning. And the rest is somewhat history and somewhat successful.

SPEAKER_00: 7:32

Wow. So I have so many questions. So I have to say, first of all, I think you're the first guest. I've been doing this for six years. I think you're the first guest that's come in and said, I found a textbook at the dump and it changed my life. And I cannot tell you how much I love that. Like I love that so much. That's awesome. Because I think I don't know. I where there's so much pressure as maybe just people, but especially as you know, uh academics and creatives and stuff like that, to figure things out. Like you have to know and you have to do this and you have to do that. When sometimes it's like a tiny little thing, like a like a little moment of inspiration, something serendipitous though.

SPEAKER_02: 8:13

I was just about to say serendipity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 8:15

It pushes us in a whole new direction. And that's such a cool story.

SPEAKER_02: 8:18

It was it was definitely life-changing and not expected. And it definitely just made me realize that I wasn't just fascinated in the natural world to appreciate it, but maybe I wanted to be more inquisitive on even a cellular level into the things that I was passionate about.

SPEAKER_00: 8:40

That's really cool. So and that also brings up in my mind, you know, you say you lived in the Netherlands for a couple of years. And one, I want to know what that was like, because that's at least to me, the, you know, guy who's never been in the Netherlands but would love to go. It sounds wonderful. But two, in that program, is there I'm trying to think of how the right way to ask the question. So I feel like sometimes in our institutions, there's like a big divide between like art is over here and science is over here, right? They're like separate things. But you found a really cool program that marries those two, right? Is that something that you feel like is more accepted over there? Is that part of like a cultural thing, or is it just that institution happened to have a really cool program?

SPEAKER_02: 9:27

I think that's a really great question, and actually one that nobody has ever asked me before. I would say it's a little bit of both. I think there's a huge history of scientific illustration, medical illustration, and botanical illustration, specifically in Europe, and many different artists. That is, that was their realm of work. And the research that was shared in Europe from pre-Renaissance onward was shared as illustrations, and that was work that was being done in Europe and being shared via images that were being created. And that visual language has definitely always been historically a huge part of European research culture, more than here necessarily. But that's also, I mean, we started the US started its whole, I mean that's a whole other colonial art is horrifying. The anatomical inaccuracies in colonial art is really deeply disturbing to me. So I it's kind of an interest. I mean, but those were also people who weren't training for that necessarily. They were coming over from Europe or had group grown up in the US, weren't classically trained. There was a huge history of the classical training of artists and working with and side-by-side scientists in Europe way more than there was here early in the US.

SPEAKER_00: 10:51

That's so fascinating to me because like there's a lot of emphasis sometimes on STEM education. And that's great. Obviously, I'm that guy. Like I enjoy, that's my thing. And then it's evolved in some ways into STEAM, you know, to add arts into it. And I think that's so important. But I feel like for whatever reason, and there's a lot of reasons, but the adoption of that sometimes here in the US is not great. Like it's not great. I think that we make a nod to the humanities, to arts, to a lot of the other things that are in should be integral parts of our scientific pursuits. Like the it protects against so many terrible things that can be done in the name of science in some ways. And like I love that's the direction you've chosen. I think it's such a great way to tell the story of all the things that you tell the stories of.

SPEAKER_02: 11:42

Well, that's and that's really what I talk about mostly is even though I call myself a scientific illustrator, I don't call myself an artist. I also would call myself a storyteller, maybe, or a communicator sooner than I would call myself an artist, because I feel that it's my job to help facilitate sharing knowledge with people. I don't, I'm not, people are always asking me, like, oh, what's your favorite thing to draw? Well, that's kind of a moot point. I draw what people ask me to draw, what I draw research, I draw information text panels for science centers. And my goal is to create really digestible content, no matter who the audience is supposed to be, even if it isn't supposed to be general audiences, I want a general audience for the most part to be able to look at something that I've created and understand it at least to a level where they can develop curiosity about it. I'm fostering curiosity is the biggest part of my life. All I want in my life is to make people curious about the natural world and about what is going on around them, what research is going on around them, even if that means, you know, maybe they're gonna give money to like this is a grant proposal or something. It goes in all different directions from people wanting to donate to a science center to wanting to donate to a research project to just finding that spark of curiosity about something because they've visually discovered something.

SPEAKER_00: 13:15

Yeah, that's really cool. And that's a great goal. You know, my wife spent years and still works a little bit in a science center. And, you know, she comes at it sometimes from you know, the more demonstration side, the hands-on, like she's gonna, you know, for it's for Halloween, she'll blow up a pumpkin and talk about combustion reaction, things like that. But the way I hear you talk about it in so many ways is reminiscent of the way that she and her colleagues and people in the like not, I mean, I don't want to say informal science education, because that's not exactly right, but maybe the non-institutional kind of science education of like the job's not to teach everything or even to tell the whole story sometimes, but just to be that little spark, that little like instigation of discovery. Because what's more exciting than that, right? Like we we lose that like childhood wonder where everything is magical. And I think sometimes through art and through illustration, that we can capture a little bit of that. And looking at your website, and I you know I've followed your work for a while. I actually discovered you or connected with you through some illustration you were doing for the native habitat project and some t-shirts you had designed and things like that, and I loved all of that, but like your work is really good. Like it's really good.

SPEAKER_02: 14:35

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 14:36

And uh so this is maybe a dumb question as a not art guy.

SPEAKER_02: 14:41

But like Noah's a dumb question.

SPEAKER_00: 14:44

Well, then I'm just gonna swing at it, right? I'm just gonna go for it. Like, what medium do you go with? Is it digital art? Are you like drawing on a sheet of paper? Is it some of both? Like, how do you come about this beautiful work that you do?

SPEAKER_02: 14:57

So, in the same way that a lot of my work is works in two different directions, whether it's research based or public outreach, I also kind of have three different styles that I work in. So I work in your right to be confused, I think, is what is basically what I mean. So I work in either watercolor, which means that's a lot of my more botanical stuff. I think that more classical approach lends itself really well to botanical illustrations and to some animal illustrations. Most of my clients for that are science centers want me to be doing kind of hyper-realistic uh Photoshop illustrations. So basically I paint on Photoshop. I make every single creature that I make is a separate file, and every single creature that I make is made up of like 15 different layers of, you know, feathers and background painting. So I treat it very much like it would be an oil painting where I'm working from the back up to make layers to create a three-dimensional looking creature or plant. And then the last thing that I do, which you can also see on my website, is research stuff, which is very two-dimensional often. So more line drawings and simple colors graphics that better in research settings. So it's a little bit of a mismash, mishmish, mismash? Yeah. And I feel like I must have said that out loud before, but now suddenly none of it sounds right. I wish that more of my clients wanted me to work in watercolor because that I find the most um fulfilling to work in. How freaking cool is it to that the human mind is capable of looking at an object and looking at a bunch of different colors on a palette and knowing how much of each of those colors to mix together to recreate something. I think I like obviously at this point I do it subconsciously. I'm not even aware of how that works. Right. But I don't understand how that can happen. Like, how does I still don't understand how that can happen. That's mind-blowing to me that I can like look at a leaf and say, well, I think it's gonna be a little bit of burnt number, but then mostly like this, and then it has like a little bit of black in it. That's so wild to me. I don't understand how you can do that. And digitally it's so much easier because maybe I have 25 reference photos, and if I want, I can use the color picker to find something. And that's the only like cheating that I would say that I do, because everything else is like very much I'm treating the medium like it's like it's a regular painting, but I do have the power to use the color picker, and I feel like that takes a lot of the joy out of creating something.

SPEAKER_00: 17:41

Huh. And that's such an interesting perspective. So I actually really get that, like really understand that. I'm not creative in this way specifically. Like I like to draw and I've tried to paint a little bit, and the thing that you're describing of mixing the colors, like my mind just it doesn't like I can see it and I know what I want it to look like. And then I'm like, this is not that. But I do woodwork. And like it's the difference for me sometimes between like hand carving something or hand turning something and you know, plugging into my computer and letting my CNC machine like carve it out. Like it's still in some ways the same, but you're right, there's that tactile like joy of creation and discovery and exploration in some ways part of it that they kind of I don't know, it gets pulled out a little bit sometimes.

SPEAKER_02: 18:34

Yeah, and it keeps your brain a little bit more active, too, I think, which is really good.

SPEAKER_00: 18:39

So I think you know, I again I've looked through a lot of your illustrations over the past couple days, just preparing for this. And you know, I like I said, I've followed you for a while. I have to tell you, looking through these, I love the the infographics that you do. I think they're so cool. I think it's a great way educationally to approach science education because you can cram so much into a single image, right? Um no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02: 19:06

No, and that's the benefit when people are talking, you know, before the advent of AI, when people were asking me why or what why is what you are doing better than photographs? Well, for exactly that reason, right? Like a photograph maybe can encapsulate a couple of different species, maybe a lot of endemic plant species to an area all in one image, but you're not gonna have the animals that browse on it, the animals that bury the nuts to the plants in the same, they're doing something during the fall, this is happening during the summer. We're gonna show the blossoms at the same time so that people can ID it outside during every single season. You have so many possibilities, so much information you can distill into one image. And I think that a part of growing as a scientific illustrator is learning better how to work with my clients and figuring out what's too much information, what's too much text, what's a digestible amount of species to include in a graphic and all of that kind of working together so that we can share as many plant species and animal species at the same time without really overwhelming the viewer.

SPEAKER_00: 20:16

Yeah, no, for sure. And so I'm looking at the meadow ecosystem infographic you have up there, and it shows like a nice pasture and prairie and a fence line and a little birdhouse and tractor and all kinds of things. But I think it's such an interesting way, again, to approach it because you can see all the different layers. And I know for those of you listening and not, you know, uh looking at us as we do this, but like there's so many different things. You see wildflowers, you see a fox going after a rodent, you see a quail and bumblebees and all of these different things that you know, again, build out and fill out an ecosystem uh in these cool little vignettes. And I love it. And I'll post a link to this specific picture and everything else, but in the show notes. So if you want to look at this as we're you know talking, you can. But when you start to, I'm curious a little bit about the creative process that goes into this. You know, I I know a lot of times you're asked for a very specific sort of uh you know, uh deliverable, right? Whatever it is they're trying to get across. But what does your process look like? How do you decide what all goes into a picture like this or an infographic like this, and then how to build it from there?

SPEAKER_02: 21:30

So it starts obviously with a big conversation with my clients. So for example, I just worked with Florida Fish and Wildlife to make an infographic for them about native wetlands aquatic plants. So we were talking about how many species we thought total they wanted to include, what they wanted the focus to be on. And then from there, we chose a group of species that were going to represent each depth of water for the species, and that included for the animals and plants that we did. And then I come back with a really hideous sketch that I hope that my client is going to still trust me after seeing, because there is no benefit for them having to pay me or for my time in me making like an extremely realistic tiny little thumbnail recreation of what the graphic is gonna look like. So, I mean, the plants look pretty similar to the animals in the drawing. It's all little like squiggles of stuff. When people tell me they're bad at drawing, I'm like, yeah, well, me too, sometimes. So I make very small thumbnail sketches showing the location kind of of each animal or plant. And before I do that, I like to do kind of a research process where I sit down and look up how many of these different animals' life cycles are interconnected with plants and are interconnected with each other. And that helps determine the placement of each of those plants in the graphic and the placement of each of the animals in the graphic. So I usually make like a diagram where I put plants on one side and animals on the other, and then I draw arrows to each of which species are related to each other. And then from there, I'm trying to work on creating a couple of thumbnails that do show each of those species kind of interacting with each other in the way that they would naturally. And then within that, you know, if there are different ecotones that have different species in them within the graphic, trying to make sure that like the area that in my mind is sandy soil doesn't have any of the wrong species in it or something. So trying to work on the layout of that. Meanwhile, in the background, usually my client is writing the text. So I don't usually do the text. I occasionally have offered to do text. It's not my preference. Um, and I usually tell them how many words they can have. I have a like a word count for each bubble. I'll try to plan in how many different text bubbles I want. And usually I'll give them a title for each text bubble, and then they just determine what they want each text bubble to say. And then I start individually painting every single different element. So every single plant that you see is a different file, every single animal that you see is a different file, the background is a different file, and then I put them all together and kind of start shading them to make sure that they look like they're all in the similar environs. And then I like to think that I'm done. And then suddenly somebody else joins the project who had never spoken before, and it's the scientist researcher who isn't in the education department, and they were supposed to be on the project the entire time, but here they are hopping on at the 11th hour. The project's due in 24 hours. And did you notice that the number of scales on this particular drawing? Now I know that it's a correct number of scales, but from the graphic, we can't quite tell. It's covered, it's covered by this leaf. Could you move the leaf? And it's like, I've already flattened this image to be one thing, but yes, I can individually paint out that leaf so that we can count the number of skeutes on this species, and then usually I'm done. And so it's a whole process.

SPEAKER_00: 25:19

Was that all, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 25:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 25:22

So that I think that's such a good description. For one, it's incredible to me, like the layers and layers that go into this. But uh the amount of thought and planning and research and everything that goes into like creative work, especially in this vein, but I'm gonna say creative work just in general. I don't think people realize that. I don't think most folks just looking at an image in a textbook or seeing something online realize the time and the effort and the forethought and all the stuff that goes into it, especially like the client relation thing that you're talking about at the end of, oh, by the way, you know, his eyes just a little bit too high. Like, oh my god, like yep. So that's I mean, that's really cool. And I enjoy hearing you talk about this because uh so I I wrote a children's book and I would give these probably, I don't know if I was a very good like client on the like on my side of it, because I would probably give these like really wordy, uh maybe incredibly vague descriptions to the publisher and illustrator, and they would come back with these, you know, like you're saying, kind of bubble diagrams and like you know, rough sketches, and I'd be like, Yeah, blah, blah, blah. And I would just like throw words at them. But then when it came back, it was always like, this is exactly what was in my head. And the ability to take like the jumbled thoughts of a scientist or writer or someone and put it into a visual form, I think it's almost like a superpower. I think that's incredible.

SPEAKER_02: 26:56

What's even better than that is being able to translate scientists' really bad drawings. They're like, this is the drawing that I've been showing during all of my presentations, and I'm like, oh my God, how did people even know what species you were talking about? And being able to translate those drawings is also pretty funny. And but a lot of scientists have a really good sense of humor about it. So it can be pretty entertaining. I want to do a section of my website that's like what the scientist was using versus like what they have now, because I it it certainly helps with communication so much. I mean, that's my like I said, that's my whole shtick.

SPEAKER_00: 27:33

Yeah, at the very least, that would make a great video. So let's take a quick break. I think that's a good point to plug in a quick break, and then when we come back, I actually want to talk about the kind of public communication side of what you do and some of the outreach stuff that you do. So we'll come right back. Well, hello, and welcome to the mid-roll. I hope you're enjoying this holiday season so far, or if you're listening to it like in the middle of June. I don't know. Enjoy whatever time you're in and whatever time you have. That sounded like a threat. It wasn't supposed to be. It's really supposed to be my time to thank you for listening to Planthropology and for being a part of what we do here. If you'd like to support the show, there's a lot of ways to do that. You can go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Podchaser anywhere that reviews live and leave a rating and review for the show. You can email me at planthropologypod at gmail.com and let me know what you think. If you've got ideas for guests, if you want to be a guest, if you have feedback in general, I would love to hear it. You can reach out on social media through Planthropology or through my personal personal's maybe not quite right, but my other social media at the plantprof. And you can find me on all the platforms, YouTube, uh, Instagram, Facebook, unfortunately, TikTok, whatever, anywhere and everywhere. I unfortunately, for better or worse, am probably there. If you'd like to financially support the show, you can go to planthropologypodcast.com and snag some merch. You can find old episodes there as well. Or you can go to buy me a coffee.com slash planthropology. And for the price of a cup of coffee, you can buy me a cup of coffee. But also pay for hosting fees and things like that. I would very much appreciate your support. Um what else? What other things are there? Oh, there's so many things. I don't know. I'll probably think of them later, and I can cut them in if I have to. But if not, that's fine too. It's time for more with Jay, and I'm gonna stop talking in five, four, three, two, one. Okay, so before the break, we were talking about the process that goes into your illustrations and goes into the drawings and the work that you do and how complex that is. And you mentioned earlier in the conversation that uh what you do is storytelling, right? That's such a big part of it. And uh I actually think that in science communication in general, whether we're writing a research paper or uh doing this or you know, whatever, that we're trying to tell a good story. That's the point of it. And I think again, I discovered you on social media and I love what you do on social media, but can we talk a little bit about that? Because I actually think what you were discussing before the break of here's what the scientist gave me and here's my final project would be so good. How did you decide to sort of venture into like the social media videos and posting and all of that from what you do? Is it like this would be great marketing or I need a creative outlet that's not this? Like what got you into that?

SPEAKER_02: 30:30

I feel like it's been such kind of like a tangled path of when I first so I had an Instagram years ago when I was making stencils and creating stuff, and that was to me to be marketing, I guess.

SPEAKER_01: 30:45

Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 30:45

And then I started making videos, and no, I didn't start making videos. That's not true. I started making posts first because Instagram hadn't become obsessed with videos yet, right? So I started making posts of my illustrations, and I had very few followers, maybe like 2,000 or something. And I was putting a ton of effort into, you know, I would show a picture of a turkey vulture and then I'd write like five paragraphs of description of what is incredible about the adaptations of a turkey vulture, and 100 people would see it. Right. And so then I was like, this is kind of not fulfilling, and I kind of stepped away from it, and then I started sharing more stuff of what I was seeing outside. So my experiences in nature and exploring, and that was when reels started becoming more popular. And I had a couple reels that did okay. And then, I mean, you mentioned Native Habitat Project. I think that my account really took off when I started doing some stuff with Kyle Liebarger from Native Habitat Project. Um, obviously, he's got a huge following, and if you don't know him, go check out the work that he does. We're about to launch, we're actually dropping a new project this Thursday.

SPEAKER_00: 32:06

Oh, very cool.

SPEAKER_02: 32:07

So working with Kyle brought a lot of clients directly to me because he's got a huge sort of research, but also science center people following him. And a couple of people started reaching out to me. I was already doing some illustrations for different science centers, but I started getting more clients through Instagram and realized that maybe that was a good avenue of advertising. I don't do any out like outreach, I don't email cold email. When I when my career first started, I tried doing cold emailing of science centers and research facilities and stuff. And it was so demoralizing and kind of embarrassing because basically nothing came of any of it. And so between Kyle, the work with Native Habitat Project, and then I also did a piece for New Hampshire Public Radio, which is makes no sense because radio is not visual. People are like, wait, you did an illustration for radio?

SPEAKER_01: 33:16

Oh, that's funny.

SPEAKER_02: 33:17

But I actually ended up working with these two guys who have a program on New Hampshire Public Radio, and they wanted to talk about the life cycle of the spotted salamander. And I had become had gotten in contact with one of them, one of the scientists, because I had a question about discovering a salamander in the snow in the middle of winter near where I lived in New Hampshire at the time. And that turned into a conversation and another, you know, serendipitous thing, right? Where I found a salamander in the snow, and then suddenly I had an infographic on New Hampshire Public Radio about salamanders. So at the end of the piece on an NHPR, they said, go check out our website where we have an infographic by scientific illustrator Juliana Smarr, whatever. So between that and people seeing that graphic, because it's one of the first represent like representations of the salamander life cycle, including talking about the importance of the algae that they are that they need for their development, that ended up really taking off as well. So those things kind of got me to to where I am and figuring out that maybe being more visible on social media was useful. But I mean, I feel like you're deriving a lot of enjoyment out of the stuff that you make for Instagram. I could be wrong. I would say that I'm deriving negative 200% enjoyment out of the things that I do on Instagram. It is so, for me, soul sucking. All I don't want to be filming myself making stuff because it takes up time, creative time, moving the camera around to show different angles of how I'm painting, because nobody just wants to see a video of the entire process of me painting for 50 hours. All of that, and then I'm so camera shy, making 25 takes of myself saying the exact same sentence over and over and determining that none of them are worthy of posting online. All of that is so soul crushing in combination with then spending hours editing something that is ultimately under 20 seconds long. And then fortunately, by the end of it, I'm so pissed off by the whole process that I never care how it actually does. Like in my mind, I want anything to go viral, right? But the second I post it, I'm like, well, like it's just gonna, it's gonna be whatever it is, and it's either gonna do okay or it's not, and I'm just assuming it's gonna be a flop. So whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 35:52

That that's all of that is so relatable, Jay. Like and I do. I have fun doing it, and I know I could get more views leaning into some different parts of it and try. But like it's a it's for me at least, it's a fun creative outlet, and I get to get on there and yell about bananas and whatever. It's fine for me. But you're right, it's so much work. You know, you know, and you mentioned like drawing for 50. Is that how long it took some of these take you?

SPEAKER_02: 36:20

Like oh, more than that.

SPEAKER_00: 36:21

Yeah, it has to, right? So, you know, it's another part of the process. You said something that I thought was really funny of you know, having to have take after take of yourself saying the same sentence. I was clearing out, like I'll notice my phone was full or almost full, and I was like, oh, that's weird. So for one, I had forgotten to turn off the auto download thing on my podcast app. So I had like 40 gigabytes of podcast download. But then it was just like hundreds of videos of my own face that I had to like that's horrible.

SPEAKER_02: 36:52

Yeah, no, it is horrible. It really is horrible, and it's especially because I live near an Air Force base and an area where they are cutting down all of the trees despite my protestations, and there's an unbelievable amount of leaf blowers. Half of the videos are just me like this. The video is running, and I'm waiting for whatever the sound is to go away, and then I can start speaking again. And then, of course, when I finally start speaking again, I completely forget the name of the thing that I wanted to say or whatever it was. So yeah, my whole camera role is just my face over and over again saying, and this is, and yeah, it's such a weird thing.

SPEAKER_00: 37:32

It's and and this thing we do, I think of science communication in general, is such a an interesting business, a field, I don't know what to call it, whatever it is. Like it's so strange in some ways, but it's so important. Have you seen, and you know, maybe this is a big question. I don't know sometimes even how to answer it for myself, but like when you think about the impact of your work, when you think about like, you know, you put these things out there into science centers and textbooks and all those things. Like sometimes it's hard to measure impact, at least for me, of the work I do. Have you been able to have like some of those glimpses of like, here's what my work has done, here's how it's contributed? Did like do you get that feedback ever?

SPEAKER_02: 38:18

So that's I feel like a funny question to to follow up the other question with, because I would say that I have been, you know, in the doldrums about feeling like I don't really know what if what I'm doing has an impact. But I will say that social media, since my account has had some success lately with some videos that I actually care about, talking about that I don't use, you know, AI in my own illustrations and that type of thing, that those videos have like 1 million, 2 million views.

SPEAKER_01: 38:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 38:54

That that and like 60,000, 70,000 shares, that actually makes me feel more like I have a voice than I do in my actual career. So there is this like, is social media maybe not a terrible, horrible thing that I hate? Maybe a tiny bit, but also mostly it is. But I can see how it in the past six months, since my account has gotten more popular, I have been less depressed about the impact that I feel like I'm having. Whereas I'm watching the world crumbling around me and you know, just crying all the time about what's happening. But I feel like the fact that I kind of feel like I tiny bit have a voice now through social media is more feels like more of an impact than I feel like the 75 visitors per week to a small science center may have, or the 200 readers of a research paper. Sure. Um, whether or not the research paper is really important, yes, of course, it could be super cutting edge, and I'm so proud that I got to illustrate it. There I've had a couple of really cool ones lately that I'm super excited about, but the impact of that is invisible to me.

SPEAKER_01: 40:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_02: 40:17

And I enjoy talking about it. I enjoy talking about the research that I get to illustrate, but I think the social media part actually maybe does make me feel more like I have a little bit of a voice and some agency that I didn't feel like I had before, which is cool.

SPEAKER_00: 40:35

Yeah, no, it is, and I I completely agree with you, and I understand that feeling on both sides of it. Like it feels like I don't know, screaming into the void sometimes, or putting things just out there into you know, whatever. And like some the work matters for the work, right? And I have to say, if it's encouraging at all, I really genuinely enjoy what you do. Like I love your work, your illustrations are wonderful, and I'm glad that I got to discover you through again through social media. But like I see being someone who is, you know, in at least a small part of this field, this the scientific storytelling field. Like I see the work that you do, and I see the I don't know, care and effort and heart that goes into it. And at least to me, that means a lot. Like I think that has an impact on me as a scientist and as an educator to know there are people that are putting so much of themselves into their work. And like, so I appreciate that for whatever it's worth.

SPEAKER_02: 41:32

Your appreciation matters to me, really, truly.

SPEAKER_00: 41:36

So I I think it's super cool. And I, you know, I'm now I'm paying attention to you, but I'm also reading about salamanders as we're talking. So like that's super cool. So you mentioned something, and I don't want to drive us too far down this road, but you know, maybe it's somewhere we need to go. Talking about AI. I know. I'm sorry to make you talk about it. I uh it's okay.

SPEAKER_02: 41:58

I mean, you're right. I think it's the most, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:01

Yeah, go ahead. It's a pressing issue, right? Like, and it's one of those things that I think people maybe don't understand the whole picture of why it's a problem. So as an artist, as an illustrator, as someone who does this professionally, can you just talk briefly about the challenges that presents to you?

SPEAKER_02: 42:21

Sure. Well, for one, finding work. AI is taking my job because people can easily type in, you know, image of an ex doing X and get an image generated right away. But I would say for me, trying to convince scientists and the general public that the value of a scientific illustrator or even a photograph has more value is AI has no filter to check for accuracy. This is something that everybody talks about constantly. But for example, if I was going to illustrate a bear skeleton, I know already that there are many illustrations done by humans online that are inaccurate. I wrote my master's thesis on the Scandinavian brown bear. I've done a lot of research with the articulation of their skeleton. I know how it works. I know that the majority of the illustrations online are already inaccurate. And you know what AI is deriving their illustrations from? All of that stuff. So AI can't even check the way that I can check for accuracy. And so they're cobbling together all of these different inaccuracies and distilling it down into perhaps an even more inaccurate image in the end. And that may not seem important in this particular field, but there's also anatomical illustrations of humans that I have seen that are inaccurate. There are illustrations of surgeries that I have seen that are inaccurate. There are illustrations of, you know, the anatomy of plants, all different stuff that's inaccurate. And yeah, you're not going to be going into surgery on a plant anytime soon that's going to, you know, screw, screw something up if you're using an AI image. But there's potential implications for actual serious harm if we're utilizing images that AI has no way of fact-checking, essentially. And so I would rather push for photography over AI images any day of the week, because at least that I mean it's a really challenging thing right now from my work because it AI is good at doing what I do, which is taking tons of images and combining them all together and sharing them all at the same time.

SPEAKER_01: 44:48

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 44:48

And I talk about in my job the benefit of, you know, if you if somebody hires me to draw a male cardinal, that I am going to be going out and looking at 200 images of male cardinals to make sure that I am creating the platonic ideal of male cardinal to share with people so they can use it to ID a bird. And a photo obviously is one photo of one single individual. It's not representative of the species as the whole. And AI also is better at kind of mixing together all those things into one image, but it can't look and say, even necessarily, that's a female cardinal or that's a male cardinal or anything. And obviously, there are many different applications and stuff that you can use that that are better, and you can obviously filter it for your own accuracy on top of that. But it's just, it's I know that there will reach a point where it's undetectable, and there are many things that it is undetectable in already. But for illustration, I feel like I am so hyper-aware, and it takes the joy out of it too, right? I don't know if you feel that way where you see stuff and you're like, wow, this is really cool. And then you can tell that it's not made by a human, and you're like, oh well, I no longer find this remotely interesting. And I hope, I hope that people continue to have that visceral like yick reaction to AI stuff because it's it lacks soul, right?

SPEAKER_00: 46:26

It's just it's very like uncanny valley a lot of times. And you know, there's something you said that I had never thought of in this context before, but you know, looking at hundreds of pictures of a cardinal, right? Whatever bird or plant or animal or whatever it is, and distilling it into like what your mind thinks of or what the you know, what a common person or someone might think of as a cardinal. And that that just jumps out at me as like a different type of data analysis, you know, a different data interpretation where you're taking all of this information, all these data points of different birds and you know anatomical differences and distilling it into a product that is the interpretation of those data. And there is a again, a storytelling like heart behind some of that. Then when we interpret data, you know, as a scientific writer, which I don't love, I do it, but I don't love it. You know what I mean? We have to do it. And you can read a paper that has very like uh clinical analytical uh conclusions based on data, uh or some that really mean something. You know what I mean? Like it's you feel that this has impact and importance. And I I kind of feel through the way you talk about this the same way. Like, yes, you can distill a whole bunch of pictures into an image using an AI, you know, generative program. It lacks that I don't know that the impactful part of the story that this is the way we perceive reality as humans. This is the way we tell stories about our the nature around us and the world around us and the way we interact it. So I you know, for me, I feel the same way as you that I look at an AI image and I'm like, oh, oh, come on. Like that sucks. Like that's really upsetting me.

SPEAKER_02: 48:19

Yes. Well, I'm glad that people have that reaction. I know that for the most part, the people that I hold dear to me feel that way, but I know that there are many people who enjoy it, create it. Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 48:34

So But I also think that on you know, what you were talking about is you're able to tell the story of why it matters. Like through our conversation here, through the social media work you do, like that piece of it matters too. I think so many of the issues we face are at the root educational issues, right? AI is a tool that has just been thrown at people that maybe they don't completely understand. I don't completely understand it. There's so much there, right?

SPEAKER_02: 49:02

Like And we do use it. It's not, I mean, I'm not claiming it there are ways that we don't even realize that we are utilizing it. Every it's all around us already. It already was before we started talking about it as a problem graphically, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 49:17

100%. But understanding a little bit more about it through listening to a podcast discussion or watching a video with a couple hundred views or a couple million views or whatever, like that stuff from where I sit matters too. And part of the educational experience is the background knowledge necessary there. And so, you know, I think you're fighting the fight in a lot of ways, and I think that's cool.

SPEAKER_02: 49:41

Trying my best.

SPEAKER_00: 49:43

So a couple of questions here as we sort of get towards the end. You asked, you mentioned earlier that people like to ask you, and I feel like I'm gonna be sort of a douchebag and ask you the same question, but like you say, like people like to ask you, like, what's your favorite thing to draw? Let me ask that a little bit differently. Is there a favorite maybe you mentioned you really enjoy watercolor, right? Would you say that's like your favorite way to approach this? Do you have like, do you prefer the infographics? Do you prefer some of the anatomical stuff? What do you like, what really gets you happy about this?

SPEAKER_02: 50:16

This is actually a really tough question because there's I feel like there's a couple of different answers. I have to say that I don't like the end result in terms of like wanting to share it with the with my followers or whatever on Instagram. But I love illustrating research projects because that is for me, I'm going from zero to 60 on the understanding of something. I go from picking up the phone for a call, somebody telling me they want me to illustrate the first ever research on whether or not it's effective to provide lidocaine in fish tagging and go. And I go from not knowing anything about that to watching hundreds of videos of bluefin tuna being caught and tagged and having like a lidocaine shot put in for the first time in history that they're trying to use pain medications on fish. This is like unheard of in the non-mammalian aquatic research world. And that one, the just the excitement of getting to to illustrate research like that is awesome, but it's so cool to go from knowing like, what do I know about tuna? I know about like the can. And I'm I'm like, I know that I have had it as sushi. I know generally what the structure of a tuna looks like. I've walked through a Japanese fish market and seen what a giant bluefin tuna looks like. That's kind of where my knowledge ends. And then by the end of the project, I know what their entire internal anatomy looks like. I know what color they look like when they've been pulled out of the water versus what color they are when they're not stressed in the water. Didn't know that was even a thing that they changed color that much between when they're underwater and when they're above water, that stress can have that much of a change on the way that their skin appears. All of these things is just to go from zero to 60 on something like that is so exciting.

SPEAKER_01: 52:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 52:13

And then for like an infographic, that's awesome. And the research that goes into that is so cool too, but it's a different excitement.

SPEAKER_00: 52:22

Yeah, that's really interesting. I and I love that of the yeah, kind of that you get to have that joy of discovery over and over. And that's yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 52:30

And that's part of why I wanted to be a scientific illustrator and not a scientist, because I was afraid of like I had friends who were out, they'd been studying the same species of bee for 15 years, and I couldn't picture feeling like I had an impact if I was trapped studying species for the next 35 years of my life or whatever.

SPEAKER_00: 52:52

Yeah, no, I get that for sure.

SPEAKER_02: 52:53

And then the other question I ask all my guests is if there is a piece of advice, whatever that is, it can be just life advice, it can be about science, it can be about art, it can be your favorite cookie recipe, whatever it is, that you would like to leave with our listeners, if there's like a thing that they should take home with them, what that would what would that be I think we touched about on it already, but I would say that not losing your curiosity and appreciating the fact that humans as a species are the only species capable of wonder and appreciation of the natural in as intellectual a way as we are, and celebrating that in your life, I think is the most important part of life, and that's why I do what I do, and I want all other humans to realize that that you guys can all do that too, and it's the best.

SPEAKER_00: 53:56

That's super cool. Love that. Well, Jay, this has been wonderful. I have had so much fun talking to you. An hour goes quick, I think, sometimes, and I have learned a lot, and I really enjoy and appreciate your take on so much of this stuff. And I hope you keep doing what you do because I really enjoy it. Where all can we find you? Plug your stuff real quick.

SPEAKER_02: 54:15

Please follow me on Instagram, science underscore visuals, and check out my website, scivisuals.com, S-C-I. And that's the only places you can find me.

SPEAKER_00: 54:29

That that actually, I'm not gonna lie, that actually sounds really nice. There's only two places to be found. I may need to look into that a little bit. But thanks so much for being on. You're just a delight to talk to you, and I really enjoyed that.

SPEAKER_02: 54:40

My pleasure, absolutely. Anytime.

SPEAKER_00: 54:42

Wait, hold on, please don't go anywhere yet. Uh so Jay and I had talked before this episode, uh, before we recorded, about her actually wanting to ask me a question, and that was fun because I am always throwing questions at people and they're answering them, and it's fun to get some back sometimes. And uh I totally forgot during the recording of this episode, and after we were done, I was like, is there anything else? And she was like, Well, remember, I wanted to ask you a question, and then I did remember. So we actually recorded that, and I want you to hear it because it's fun and it's about um freeze protection and plants, and it's a sciencey little bonus thing. So that's now. Here we go.

SPEAKER_02: 55:15

So I was at home in New Hampshire, and I mean, uh obviously this is something that I've thought about before, but because I thought that I was gonna be talking to you the week that I was home, I was thinking about we were getting ready for our first really hard frost, and all of the asters there was a hard frost, all the asters looked incredible. Their whole, their flowers, the inflorescence all looked exactly the same, all the leaves looked exactly the same, and the zinnias that look, you know, anatomically pretty similar were totally screwed. They looked absolutely disgusting after one night of freeze. And I would like to very succinctly understand how that can be. Is it just like a natural antifreeze that the cells have?

SPEAKER_00: 56:07

That's a really good question. Because you're right, they're in the same family, right? They're both composites, they both have sort of some same, some of the same anatomical, I don't want to say constraints, but features and rhythms in the way they build, so to speak, the way they build petals, the way they build structures, seeds, those kinds of things. But it's a huge plant family and it's really diverse. You know, artichokes are in the same family. Lettuce isn't like it's this huge, weird plant family. But yeah, you're basically right that uh freeze tolerance really comes down to different substances in the cellular matrix, right? So plant cells have a central vacuole or a couple of central vacuoles that they fill up with water. It's like a yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_02: 56:53

I was worried, I was worried I was gonna be quizzed, so I can't prepare.

SPEAKER_00: 56:57

Like, you know, like a water balloon inside the cell that gives it structure. It's like if you put a big water balloon inside a box, fill it up with water, it puts pressure on the outsides of that box, like the cell walls, and you can give structure to a plant. It's also a place where it stores waste products, etc., right? All kinds of things. Some plants can produce different chemicals, whether those are there's there's a wide variety, right? In our, like our pine trees, a lot of the saps, the turpentines, some of those things that are in them work as freeze protectants because these are trees that are growing up in the Arctic Circle and they have to not freeze solid. So these chemicals let the cells not rupture. So it's like when you add salt or sugar or something to water, it depresses the freezing point. So they just pump these chemicals into there because essentially what happens is you know, water expands as it freezes and it makes crystals. So when uh your little water balloon is full of water and it freezes, it punctures the cell, uh ruptures the cell. But some plants essentially thicken the water, add different things in there to keep it from freezing, the viscosity goes up. There's a lot of different things. But yeah, so a lot of our warmer season plants, you mentioned zinnias, those are very much a summer, like they it can be a thousand degrees, and they're like, they don't care. Yeah, but they they get a whiff of pumpkin spice in the fall and they're done. You know, they're done. So yeah, a lot of those purple and blue asters, especially. I've seen the same thing. We've had a real light frost here. They look great. They're wonderful. Yeah, they're so happy. Um so some of those later season flowers, and you it's interesting because you do see a lot of the blues and purples in some of our cool season plants. They just they have more chemicals in the cells that will let them not freeze solid.

SPEAKER_02: 58:44

Well, thank you. I appreciate your very efficient and clear description.

SPEAKER_00: 58:49

I hope that was efficient. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 58:51

Sometimes I just are the type of things, like that's the type of thing that will stick in my mind, right? Like the reason I think I wanted to be a scientific illustrator and everything was from all of those little like factoids that you learn when you're a kid, and suddenly you're like, my brain is filled with all of these things. Like an ocelot can do this, and like this animal can only run to this speed, but this can do this. I love all of those little, like, you can just store that away somewhere. And I think that's really awesome. That's I my mind is just filled with potentially useless plant and animal facts.

SPEAKER_00: 59:26

Yeah, but that's fun, right?

SPEAKER_02: 59:27

I think it's exactly, exactly. I mean, that's what I want my brain to be filled with.

SPEAKER_00: 59:31

You ever get to go to like nature trivia night, you're ready to go.

SPEAKER_02: 59:34

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 59:37

So at the end of the day, as you've listened to the show, hopefully for the past 126 episodes, if I have filled your brain, and my guests have filled your brain with the information necessary for a successful nature trivia night, I think we've done our jobs. Y'all wasn't Jay great. Um, I love the way she thinks about art and science and storytelling, and I and I hope you do too. And I hope you go follow her at Science Visuals and check out her website. Website and just look at the beautiful work she does. And if you ever need botanical illustration or scientific illustration, I hope you think of her. Thanks so much to you for listening and again for being a part of Planthropology. It's because of you that I get to do what I do. And uh I appreciate your support. I appreciate the feedback and just the friendship over the past six or so years. Thanks so much to Rui for our mid-roll music. Go check out his rad lo-fi dad beats and thanks so much to the award-winning composer Nick Scout for our intro and outro music. Planthropology is written, recorded, all the things by yours truly, Vikram Beliga. And uh I just I enjoy doing it. I'm glad I get to do it for you. So y'all know I love you. Keep being kind to one another. If you have not to date been kind to the people around you, do do the thing. Go do the thing. Please, please. Um thanks for being you. Be kind, be safe, and keep being really cool plant people.