Dr Emma Rehn
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bluerehn.bsky.social
Dr Emma Rehn
@bluerehn.bsky.social
1.2K followers 250 following 160 posts
Science illustrator | Research communicator for TropWATER | Palaeoenviro scientist | Archaeologist | Crafter

Based in Far North Queensland, Australia

Portfolio: https://emmarehn.com
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bluerehn.bsky.social
True story: if your dog is wearing a t-shirt, that's a human (confirmed by AI)

Thanks to my workmate Caitlin for letting me use her screenshot! #comic #AI (but not drawn by AI)
A three-panel comic. The first panel shows Plato saying "The definition of a human? A featherless biped." The second panel shows a robot labelled "A.I." saying "Okay, got it!" The third panel shows the A.I. robot showing an unimpressed Plato a screenshot of a security camera view of a dog in a t-shirt labelled "5:20pm Human" and declaring "Behold - a human!"
October 17, 2025 at 11:40 PM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Illustrating water quality challenges - this is some of my recent work showing how fire, roads & tracks, and eroding gullies can impact water quality (& how a gully can be repaired!)

These were created for my work with TropWATER & their collab with the Cape York Water Quality Partnership #SciArt
A digital illustration of a wooded hilly landscape with a river running through the middle. On the left, a burn from earlier in the dry season has left trees alive and is not eroding. On the right, a hot late dry season burn has charred the landscape, killing trees and eroding charcoal and soil into the river A digital illustration showing a creek crossing a dirt road, with rain eroding channels into the road, forming a downstream gully and releasing soil in to the river below A two-panel illustration showing an eroded alluvial gully releasing dirty water and a remediated gully, covered in vegetation with a rock chute to channel the water flow
October 10, 2025 at 2:53 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Introducing Deep Time Detectives! 🔎

Deep Time Detectives is an educational resource developed by CABAH on Australia's deep history, featuring a series of animated videos. I drew a collection of original illustrations and animated elements for these videos #SciComm

emmarehn.com/portfolio/de...
A collection of graphics centred on an anthropomorphised wombat in a waistcoat, holding a magnifying glass and pocket watch, next to the text "Deep Time Detectives". The surrounding graphics include a gumtree flower, a wallaby skull, a tree, a pollen grain, a quoll, a charcoal particle, grasses, footprints, fire, and a potoroo. An animated GIF of a cartoon wallaby eating leaves off a small tree sapling A wide image showing an illustrated landscape, transiting from open grassland with scattered trees on the left through to increasingly closed woodland with minimal grass and more dense shrubs
August 14, 2025 at 8:30 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
My dog definitely plays favourites 🐾

#comic #BorderCollie
A three-panel comic. The first panel shows a guy opening a door, smiling and saying "Hey, Lucy!" A label points to him that reads 'brother'. The second panel shows him leaning forward to a chocolate and white Border Collie moving towards him, as he says "Did you miss-" The final, double-width panel shows the dog rushing past him to wag her tail at a woman walking through the door behind him, labelled 'sister-in-law'. He says "...me?" and she says "Hi, Luce!"
July 12, 2025 at 10:22 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Live-sketches from COCE 2025 🌱

This week, I attended & presented online as part of the Conference on Communication and Environment

There were so many great sessions & discussions - I drew these live-sketches during all of the hybrid and virtual sessions I attended! #scicomm #sciart #livesketch
A collection of 16 digital sketches on a white background, summarising sessions from an environmental communication conference featuring plants, animals, and people.
June 27, 2025 at 9:10 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
I was recently commissioned to create two illustrations for The Australian Geologist, the quarterly magazine of the Geological Society of Australia

One highlights featured research, the other is just for fun!

Read the TAG June issue here: issuu.com/gsaustralia/...

#geology #sciart #scicomm
A cartoon showing hands holding a phone displaying an app titled "relative dating", subtitled "Find your fossil assemblage". The app shows a fossil fish, fern, and three-toed footprint captioned "Upper Jurassic 161.5 - 143.1 Ma". Buttons below the caption read "Not for me" and "It's a match!" A drawing of a top-down view of a landscape divided into two vertical panels, with a large, three-toed footprint in the centre shared across both views. The left panel shows a sandy floodplain with bushes, and the receding foot that created the footprint. The right panel shows seawater lapping and molluscs growing in and around the fossil footprint, with running shoes and a person holding a camera to take a photo of the footprint, with a scale bar beside it
June 24, 2025 at 10:20 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
New paper for the palaeofire fans!

Presenting the SahulCHAR collection, containing 687 sedimentary charcoal records from across Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand 🔥

Read it open access: doi.org/10.5194/essd...

This is the product of my final postdoc - thanks to all who contributed their data!
A graphical abstract for the OCTOPUS SahulCHAR collection showing a map of Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand with red dots for data points. Text on the right of the image presents key statistics: 425 locations, 531 cores, 687 char records, 23 contributors
June 17, 2025 at 11:25 PM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Happy National Archaeology Week!

This year's craft in celebration of Archaeology Week is little clay pendants - the scale bar is 4cm

#2025NAW #archaeology #craft
A photograph of four clay pendants of a trowel, an amphora, a bivalve shell half, and a colour scale bar, each attached to loops of black cord
May 18, 2025 at 6:30 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Everyone please go have fun scribbling, painting, drawing, and otherwise finding joy in making art 🎨

#WorldArtDay #Artsky
Drawings of art supplies around the text "Happy World Art Day" on a multicolour painted background
April 15, 2025 at 7:24 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Happy Pi Day! 🥧 This is my first time making pies, so I went for mini ones to share at work
A photograph of a dozen mini apple pies on baking paper
March 14, 2025 at 3:14 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Happy Lucy day, everyone 🐾
A photograph of a brown and white Border Collie smiling at the camera, laying on a footpath in the centre of a chalk circle in rainbow colours. Chalk writing on the right says "Happy 11th birthday Lucy!"
February 14, 2025 at 5:08 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
That sounds like a very cool, and challenging, job!

I hope you like this sketch inspired by the scale of global to personal in your work
A cartoon showing the Earth overlaid with high-rise city buildings, a house, and the silhouette of a person
January 29, 2025 at 5:48 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
This week, I'm celebrating reaching 1k followers! 🎉

If you follow me: comment with a few words about your research/area of expertise and some things you enjoy - and I'll sketch a little cartoon for you
A cartoon of a jumping spider in a white outfit, striking a pose on a colourful glowing dance floor in homage to John Travolta in Saturday Night Live
January 27, 2025 at 5:34 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
I made time these holidays to sketch while out and about - here's a selection of those sketches and their models

#sketchbook
A photograph of a tropical waterfall in the background, with a sketch of that waterfall in a sketchbook held in the foreground A photograph of stone steps leading down to a creek in the background, with a sketch of the steps and creek in a sketchbook held in the foreground A photograph of the twisting trunk of a tree in a grassy park, and a sketch of that tree in a sketchbook held in the foreground A photograph of a fig tree in the background, with a sketch of that tree in a sketchbook held in the foreground
January 18, 2025 at 4:46 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
My science illustration commissions are open!

If you want to visualise your research this year through custom illustrations, logos, or infographics, please get in touch

Visit emmarehn.com for my portfolio and contact info

#SciArt #SciComm #ScienceIllustration
A graphic showing six vertical panels of digital illustrations and a title box that reads "Commissions are open"
January 8, 2025 at 2:13 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
'Cascades', my last painting for 2024

Acrylic on canvas, 20x25cm

#Artsky #landscapepainting
A photograph of a hand holding a small painted canvas, showing a creek flowing over rocks with rainforest in the background
January 4, 2025 at 8:28 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
What did I read this year? 📚

Here's my year in books, in doodle form!

#YearinReview #Artsky #BookSky
A collection of doodles representing 'My Year in Books' on a black background A collection of doodles representing 'My Year in Books' on a blue background
December 31, 2024 at 2:31 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Throwback to my favourite Christmas artwork to wrap up #ArtAdventCalendar for this year

Happy holidays, everyone!
A digital drawing of a brown and white Border Collie curled up on a flat dog bed below a decorated Christmas tree atop a low table. The scene is in front of a window decorated with colourful lights, showing tropical plants and rain
December 24, 2024 at 9:29 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Layers of the atmosphere ☁️

I made this for my own reference, and for anyone else who is interested - some new #SciArt for #ArtAdventCalendar! #SciComm #EarthScience
A graphic showing the six layers of Earth's atmosphere, labelled in bubble writing. From the bottom up: Troposphere (showing clouds and an airplane), Stratosphere (showing a weather balloon), Mesosphere (showing falling meteorites), Thermosphere (showing glowing aurorae and a satellite), and Exosphere (showing satellites). Along the left side the label Ionosphere extends from the Mesosphere up to the Exosphere
December 16, 2024 at 12:47 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
#ArtAdventCalendar - my latest craft project was designing matching Christmas gifts for my trivia team

#crochet #crafting
A photograph of six crocheted finger lime slice keyrings in shades of green, red, and pink, with one resting on a person's hand
December 11, 2024 at 7:38 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Digging out an old comic for today's #ArtAdventCalendar

'Solitaire' (2010)
A three panel comic showing two people talking. The first person says "Hey, I thought you'd be glued to your computer playing that new version of solitaire." The second person responds "No, it's terrible. It has a new way of predicting when a game will run out of possible moves before you've even gotten to that point. It basically started playing the games for me." The first person says "Oh. How'd you fix it?" The second person replies "I haven't; it's been playing for the past three hours."
December 7, 2024 at 10:21 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
During the recent evenings spent waiting for coral to spawn, I sketched some coral 🪸 (& didn't get time to finish it!)

Sharing for #ArtAdventCalendar - I won't be posting daily, but I'll be joining in whenever I can 🎄
A pen sketch of a coral skeleton, with a pen beside it
December 5, 2024 at 9:32 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
What time is it?? 🎄
A photograph of three Christmas-themed cookie cutters on a floury board with a rolling pin
November 30, 2024 at 4:06 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
If you see this, post fungi 🍄
A crochet bag made up of diamond-shaped panels featuring mushrooms
November 27, 2024 at 8:47 AM
bluerehn.bsky.social
Sharing this old artwork for my fellow headache and migraine sufferers, as it still sums up the bad days pretty well

'Headache' (2018), digital

#ArtSky #digitalart
A digital illustration of the head and neck of a skeleton, facing left, with a blazing bolt of light piercing through the orbit of the eye and out the back of the skull
November 25, 2024 at 8:39 AM