Before I switched careers, I was a Scientific Illustrator. I specialized in Herpetology and my drawings were used to describe new species.

In my spare time, I did these ballpoint drawings. They're really cross-hatching gone wild, lots of little penstrokes to build up a gradient.

This is one of my old drawings for a publication- this type of drawing is more pointalist. You build up the dots with a micron pen, I would draw for 8 hours a day, each took a week.

We used this thing called a camera lucida so you can see in a microscope and your hand at once

One time I had to draw a tadpole, and it was so small and squirmy, it took me trying to hold it, and I eventually took off my glove. I didn't realize that ethanol could be absorbed through your skin. By the end of the day, I was tipsy.

Someone asked a good question: why did they use drawings instead of photographs?

For smaller specimens, the aperture of a camera had a narrow depth of field, so something was always blurry. Someone like me can draw it so that everything is crisp at once, necessary for analysis.

However, they invented a camera called SEM: Scanning Electron Microscope. It could take photos at every level and composite them. The end of my career was neigh.

The Museum wanted to keep me around, asked if I could make websites. I said yes (I couldn't) and taught myself.

Two more questions from folks: when did I switch? I have been a dev for... 13 years? They share more similarities than one might think! Both are very process-oriented, I think that's why I like both.

Another: do I still draw? Sometimes, on the weekends! https://twitter.com/sarah_edo/status/1239202620947881984?s=20