Why I Started Drawing After a PhD in Chemistry

I didn’t plan to become an illustrator.

For a long time, drawing was simply something I enjoyed doing. What I liked most was probably not even the drawing itself, but the process of starting with a blank page and slowly developing an idea until it became something I could actually see. There is something very satisfying about that moment when an image finally comes together and you look at it and think, yes, that’s what I had in mind.

My background is in chemistry. I studied it at university and later completed a PhD in supramolecular chemistry, working on organic synthesis and electronic applications. For years, I was used to thinking about molecules, structures and reactions, and to working towards a specific result.

In the lab, I usually had a molecular structure I wanted to obtain. I would start from other compounds and try to work out which reactions and which sequence of steps could get me there. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and sometimes the route I had planned turned out not to be the right one.

Looking back, I think there is something quite similar in the way I approach illustration.

I usually start with an idea, but I don’t necessarily know exactly how the final image will look. I have to find a visual solution to a problem. How can I represent burnout without simply drawing an exhausted person? How can I talk about biodiversity and the conflict between nature and development in a single image? How can I make an abstract or scientific concept feel immediate and understandable?

The difference is that, in chemistry, there is usually a structure you are trying to reach. In illustration, there isn’t one correct answer. You can try something, decide that it doesn’t work, change the composition, start again and eventually arrive somewhere completely different from where you thought you were going.

That freedom is probably what attracted me to drawing so much.

At some point I started wondering what would happen if I took it more seriously. Not because I suddenly decided that chemistry was the wrong choice, but because I realised that I really enjoyed building something from an idea and seeing it become a finished image.

And now, at 40, I am trying to understand what it means to build something new from that interest.

Being a beginner again is not always comfortable. I already know what it feels like to become competent in something. I spent years studying chemistry and working towards a PhD, so starting again in a completely different field can sometimes feel strange. There are illustrators who have been doing this since they were teenagers, and I am learning things that they probably figured out years ago.

But I also don’t think I am starting completely from zero.

I still have everything I learned before. The way I approach a problem, my curiosity about science, my tendency to analyse things, and perhaps even my patience with a process that doesn’t work the first time.

I’m just applying those things to something different now.

I don’t know exactly where this experiment will take me. I’m trying to build an editorial illustration career, learn how the industry works, put my work in front of art directors and see what happens.

For now, I’m enjoying the process.

And maybe that’s actually where it started: not with the decision to become an illustrator, but with the simple satisfaction of looking at a blank page and slowly turning an idea into something that wasn’t there before.

Gabriella