20 February 2008

This drawing is inspired by a book called "Swimmy" (Leo Leonni) as shown on Etsy. I love the story! So sweet.

Posted on 20.02.08 at 23.40
Returned 23.02.08

What a week!

This week has been very long, included 5 train journeys to London and one trip in the back of a van. One very long crystal freezing session. I always find it so sad freezing my little protein crystals. They look so beautiful. But I suppose what I need of them is data. Here is a photo of some of my crystals. The different colours are due to birefringence (double refraction) when looking down an optical microscope with a pair of crossed polarised filters.

Very tired now. Have a great weekend.

19 February 2008

Spring must be on its way. I love trees.

Posted on 19.02.08 at 18.00

Returned on 21.02.08

18 February 2008

Pebbles, Bubbles, Blisters. This is the first envelope drawn on the train on my way to London. It started out as round circles and then I decided to sort of link them. Over the course of the day I thought about the drawing and came to the conclusion that they represent the blisters I had got myself in the morning when I walked to the train station. The bicycle was a must the following day. This envelope is the first one posted before lunch time. Not sure whether drawing only with a pencil was such a good idea.

Posted 18.02.08
Returned 20.02.08

17 February 2008

I started this drawing with the intention of drawing pears, somehow they sort of turned into tears. Why I don't know. Anyhow as soon as I realised I decided to try my old pastel pencils on them. I am not sure if I like the scratchy noise it made on the envelope paper.

Posted 17.02.08
Returned 19.02.08

16 February 2008

Surprisingly, it's not been the drawing that has kept me from posting regularly but the scanning. It just seems to be to much faffing around as I have to get on my fiances computer. So I have decided to photograph them instead. It seems to be better anyhow.

16.02.08

This drawing was inspired by the design of our wedding invitations. I am very pleased how they turned out and I hope our guests will like them. Rachel. Thank you so much for helping me with them!

This envelope was posted by Rachel approx 11.30 ish. She so kindly offered to post it. How could I refuse, remembering how cold it was the previous night.

Posted on 16.02.08

Returned on 19.02.08

The first envelope

Hurray, my first envelope returned yesterday. Well, actually two returned at the same time. I wonder what will happen when I post them from Thailand or Japan. They might get slightly muddled up as these two trips are pretty much next to each other. It will also mean a break in obviously scanning them in.

My commute to London has started and I have been posting a few envelopes from there during the day. It's been freezing in the evenings and I am glad I don't have to walk to the letter box now.

Anyhow, here are my first two envelopes. The first one is a representation of chemical bonds commonly encountered in biological molecules. The idea for the drawing came from the cover of the Dorothy Hodgkin biography book. An absolutely must read, even if you are not a Scientist. She was a crystallographer whose work contributed to an extraordinary period of scientific discovery that included the development of penicillin and the discovery of the structure of DNA. Other medically important molecules she studied were: Vitamin B12 and Insulin. She received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1964.

Posted on 14.02.08 at 11.40 pm

Arrived on 18.02.08

The second envelope was inspired by some dried lavender, which I have in our flat. I soooo love its smell and can't wait til it comes back into season. The scans aren't great yet, but I am hoping I can improve them with the next envelopes.

Posted on 15.02.08 T 10.20 pm

Arrived on 18.02.08

The Diary Project

This morning I found The Diary Project blog and think it is such a great idea. Although, we are already in february 2008, I shall take the challenge (starting today) and create everyday a drawing on an envelope (end date is the the 14 th of february 2009) plus a secrete one for inside. Rules are stated here.

This is such a good opportunity to practise my drawing and to experiment with different techniques! I am quite aware it will be a big challenge and I am sure there will be difficult days. I shall post my first envelope before midnight. So exciting.

Hoping this pencil roll will stop me loosing my colouring pencils

I am quite reknown by my friends and family for misplacing things. It always seems to be either my keys, wallet or pencil that I can't find. So when I was colouring in my sketches on sunday I thought, Uhh, perhaps I should make myself a little pencil roll so that I keep my drawing stash always together. After a little bit of thought, I cut out some of the fabric from Lara Cameron that I still had left from christmas and started sewing...


Very pleased. Hoping I can keep it on me at all times as I want to start drawing more. It's been years since I had some practise.

Weekend was splendid. I managed to inherit an aquatic turtle called Donatello from a friend. Very cute. Amazingly, Donatello gets on really well with my other two turtles, which are a slightly different species and far bigger. Hurrey. No fights. I 'll try to take a pici tomorrow, but they are rather lively. We'll see.

Nighty.

Impressive Halls

The last couple of days I have been at Earls Court 2 in London supporting my fiance during an exhibition. Earls Court 2 is a column-free exhibition space, which has an area of 17000 m2. That sounds rather a lot and indeed it turned out to be far larger than I imagined. After being all day on my feet talking to people, I fell straight into bed. Hence no posts.

Here is a little virtual tour just to show you the size of Earls Court 2.

Back from 2 days in London, I rushed the following day to a synchrotron called Diamond, which is near Oxford. You probably ask what is a synchrotron? According to the Diamond website: “A synchrotron is a huge scientific machine designed to produce very intense beams of x-rays and ultraviolet light. This “synchrotron light” can penetrate deep inside matter and allows scientists to investigate the world around us at the scale of atoms and molecules.” I use this machine to study both human and animal proteins to atomic level. No matter how many times I go to a synchrotron to do my experiments, I am still amazed how we can make really small molecules visual by using X-rays.

So I found myself in two very impressive halls.

I am hoping I can post a couple of my sketches tomorrow.

My first baby bib!

This is a present for one of my friends in New Zealand. She has had her first baby recently and I thought I try myself and make her a baby bib. I used some fabric I bought before christmas from Lara Cameron. I love her fabric. Its amazing. I am quite pleased how my first big turned out and very much hope she likes it too.

Welcome everyone!!

Over the last couple of days I have been experimenting with how this blogging works. So here it is, my first blog! Hurrey!! I expect as I will go along, I will discover more things.

Molecules have always been of interest to me, but I also enjoy the arts. Not really being any good at drawing, I never pursuit the arts and ended up in science and undertaking a PhD in Structural Biology, which is nearly finished. I have just started to commute to London to continue my work as a Crystallographer, so I thought I start a blog to share my life with molecules with the world. I want to try to express my life as a scientist in pictures and unravel some of the mysteries. The pictures I am intending to create will be made from felt and fibres, rather than illustrations. I am hoping to develop my sketching and felting technique, which I recently learned at a felting workshop given by Rachel Louise Reynolds The Textile Cabin. So please excuse my awful drawings :). I am working on it.

It would be great, however, if you could leave feedback and tell me what you think. I already have three projects in mind, but they are at the moment at their sketching state. Some of the sketches, I will reveal tomorrow as it has already gone dark. I very much hope you will enjoy reading and learning about my world.

You might also read about some craft projects as I decided last year around this sort of time to try to make all Christmas presents. Having decided to make presents for people, I had to think about what I was going to create. I concluded to learn sewing and had a few sewing lessons and to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. Amazingly, even though the year was crowded with thesis writing, I managed to make quite a few presents for friends and family. They seemed to like their presents and hence, I am determined to do this year the same for birthday and Christmas presents. So everysooften I shall show you my craft projects. Probably, there might be a few occasions, where I will be desperate for advice.

Thanks for all your help and everything to come in advance!