Animal Cell

Spring 2015

This is a painting of an animal cell I completed for a class called Science Communications. For our final project, we were asked to convey a scientific concept in any media. Since most textbook diagrams only show a portion of what is happening inside a cell, I wanted to show the complexity of the events taking place inside a dynamic cell every second. Many processes are taking place here, including phagocytosis and transport of molecules through the membrane. The cell is also attached to a microfiber for support and perhaps movement through the extracellular matrix. The cell features a cell membrane, mitochondria as the dark lima-bean shapes, lysosomes as the small blue circles, peroxisomes as the small greenish circles, the golgi body towards the middle, the nucleus in the top left corner surrounded by the rough and smooth endoplasmic reticulum, and small black ribosomes throughout. The grey lines in the cell represent the support system inside the cell. I used my biology textbook to get the correct number of organelles to scale throughout the painting. Since most animal cells are depicted red, I wanted to challenge that by using other colors, and to make it aesthetically pleasing, I chose complimentary colors purple and yellow as the main hues.