And the work has a greater chance of being true

I’ve been easing into my next project — to write and illustrate something for International Laboratory Animal Technician Week, coming up at the end of January. Lab animal technicians do the vital work of caring for animals and are central to biomedical research.

Only a small proportion of all research works with animals, yet the number of animals in laboratories worldwide is sizable. Mice and rats make up the vast majority, 95% by most estimates. Zebrafish, chickens, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, monkeys, pigs, sheep, and ferrets are research animals too.

365 days a year, animal care staff feed and water them, monitor their health, minimize their distress and enrich their lives. They also have to cause pain to the animals in their care. Not surprising, this work can be emotionally difficult and exhausting. Contributing to this difficulty, the general public often misunderstands and, at times, vilifies those working with research animals.

Back to the project at hand: International Laboratory Animal Technician Week. How to acknowledge the laboratory animal technicians in a way that is meaningful to them? Something that shows an understanding of their experience, sees and appreciates them.

I don’t know what it’ll be.

What I think I’ll do then, is write short, frequent blog posts here as I figure it out. This, rather than remaining in the seeming safety of my own head (and studio) and publishing with one flourish of finished work.

It will be messy and prone to missteps. Occasionally I may post self-conscious musings when I worry what others might think or encounter imagined dangers along the way. You won’t see a straight line to an elegant solution. Behind every illustration is a tale of terrible ideas, gross oversights and delusions of grandeur. That is the way it is for me.

So, it feels somewhat unwise to let you in on this. But there is an upside to making the process the product. If I post as I go along, then each bad idea, oversight and delusion may be recognized earlier — and in the telling, it’s power to debilitate diminished. I keep going and the work has a greater chance of being true. These are the guiding principles for this blog, after all.