Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2023

Presentation information

[J] Online Poster

O (Public ) » Public

[O-02] Everyday Life of JpGU's Doctors. How to become a scientists?

Sun. May 21, 2023 10:45 AM - 12:15 PM Online Poster Zoom Room (1) (Online Poster)

convener:Sachi Wakasa(Institute of Regional Innovation, Hirosaki University), Erika Tanaka(Kochi University), Takahisa Furuichi(Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute), Natsue Abe(Mantle Drilling Promotion Office, MarE3, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology )

On-site poster schedule(2023/5/21 17:15-18:45)

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM

[O02-P07] I live as an illustrator with Ph.D

★Invited Papers

*Yutaka ABE

Keywords:illustration, science illustration, Careers for Ph.D

I am living as an illustrator with Ph.D. In this presentation, I will focus on my work as an illustrator and introduce how to develop careers.

I will briefly introduce how I became an illustrator with Ph.D. I’ve got interested in hydrology, geomorphology and resource issues in arid regions at the University of Tsukuba. Got a master degree in isotope hydrology research on the exchange relationship between groundwater flow and river water in the Kherlen River basin in Mongolia. After working for an environmental consulting company for about three years, I’ve got a Ph.D in isotope hydrology research on groundwater in the Heihe river basin, northwestern China. I worked on academic research on isotope hydrology and the effects of forest maintenance on water cycle as a fixed-term postdoctoral fellow at universities and research institutes (University of Tsukuba, RIHN), a private company (Institute of Water Science, Suntory), and a local government (Kanagawa Prefecture). In 2021, due to my own career development, family and health circumstances, I started freelance corporate activities with illustration, which was continued as my hobby.

Specifically, my works are painting on requests, and selling illustrations freely created with my own idea and their goods such as illustration collection books and postcards.
Requested illustrations has many diversity. Illustrations that can introduce the research contents of university laboratories (web page of Dr. Wakasa, H., Hirosaki University), illustrations that express biodiversity efforts in watershed diagrams in an easy-to-understand manner, concept figures for applying for scientific research expenses, figures for carbon neutral system, book cover illustrations, paintings with clients’ pets (mainly cats) as motifs, paintings for presents to a favorite artist, paintings that express the structure of a house and their life from a bird's-eye view, etc. Even in my creative painting with my own ideas, I am trying to incorporate earth science elements, such as the Joren Falls with beautiful columnar joints of basalt, Paired Catchment Experiment Methods as art, which only I can do.

Though I’m struggling to find balance of earning and life, it make me realize the feeling of “knitting life”.