An illustrated summary of the BSDB Spring Meeting 2026

Posted by Alex Neaverson, on 13 April 2026

I recently attended the BSDB Spring Meeting, and decided to spend most of my time at the conference sketching. The result is this illustrated summary – featuring portraits of almost all the speakers alongside drawings of elements from their talks, whether that’s a model organism, a signalling pathway, or a particularly striking image from their work.

I initially felt quite anxious and self-conscious to be drawing in public. After all, most of the time when I’m creating art at home, it tends to look rough right up until the last moment when it all comes together. I also normally paint from static references, which conference speakers definitely are not! But, I finally decided to take the leap after numerous conversations with veteran conference illustrator Alex Cagan, who urged me to go for it. Once I started, I could feel that each drawing was turning out a little better than the last. I have always been a visual learner and definitely felt more engaged while sketching, rather than frantically scribbling notes as I would normally do!

What started as 30+ separate illustrations on my iPad slowly turned into this after I got home from the conference. My original intention was to share each as a separate piece. However, none of the illustrations felt complete enough for this (I will definitely have to work on my drawing speed in the future), so my solution was to combine them all into one large piece.

This isn’t intended as a scientific summary, more as a memento or a snapshot of what it felt like to sit in those sessions, surrounded by so much brilliant developmental biology. If you spot yourself in there, I hope I have done you justice! And I apologise if I missed out on drawing you – at times, I couldn’t quite keep up.

I’m interested in using illustration to share the joy of developmental biology, as I’ve tried to do here, but I also think it can be a wonderful tool for communicating complex scientific ideas to those who might not otherwise engage with them. This conference reminded me how much exciting work there is to communicate. Thanks to all the speakers and organisers for making it such an enjoyable meeting!

If you’re interested to see more of my artistic work (scientific or otherwise), it can be found here: https://alexneaverson.myportfolio.com/