Celebrating Women in STEM
Artwork series for International Women's Day 2021
Commissioned by Stile Education
Adapted to A1 posters, postcards, blog illustrations and Stile app's login screen
Thankful for being part of this incredible project. Read more about Gender Bias in STEM and in the classroom in this great post by Kirsten Hood from Stile Education.
And take some time to learn more about these incredible scientists.
Stephanie Wilson
Aerospace Engineer and NASA Astronaut, USA
A veteran of three space shuttle flights, Stephanie has spent 42 days in space and as part of the Artemis program could be the first woman to walk on the moon in 2024.
“Being adventurous and being explorers is in our nature.
It’s in the history of how we’ve developed Earth and so that naturally continues to the space frontier.”
It’s in the history of how we’ve developed Earth and so that naturally continues to the space frontier.”
Emanuelle Charpentier & Jennifer Doudna
Microbiologist, France / Biochemist, USA
Emmanuelle and Jennifer won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for creating genetic ‘scissors’, known as CRISPR/Cas9, which can edit the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with precision.
“I’m proud of my gender. I think for many women there’s a feeling that, no matter what they do, their work will never be recognised as it might be if they were a man. I’d like to see that change and I think this is a step in the right direction.”
Jennifer Doudna
Early on the brainstorming phase I knew I wanted to incorporate the genetic scissors editing and cutting and pasting genes concept into the artwork look and feel.
Cutting and folding paper bits (that represent DNA's Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine, Thymine) was quicker than trying to achieve this effect in digital illustration. It was also, way more fun and spontaneous. I then photographed the paper bits and coloured them in photoshop.
Analogue + Digital rocks!
Amy Wilson
Biologist, Canada
Amy is combining stem cells, gene editing and computer models to study lung development and treat diseases such as cystic fibrosis.
This artwork was inspired by Amy’s research colourful images. I tried to mimic the effect of the “rainbow” multi-coloured pencils from my childhood. I attempted to create a rainbow pencil brush in Adobe Fresco, I scanned strokes and had a play with Ribbon brushes, but didn’t work fully as expected (I'll have a later attempt to make it work).
I used instead layer masks in photoshop to mimic projects from high school’s art class where you painted random colours with oil pastels, covered them with black ink and then scratched with a blade to reveal the colours.
Each and every student should dream big with the knowledge that they can truly achieve anything.
“The excitement of dreams coming true is beyond the description of words.”
Lailah Gifty Akita, Writer, Ghana