Braman’s Wright Finishes One-Per-Workday Pest Sketch Challenge

AGAWAM, Mass. — Natasha Wright, technical director and entomologist, Braman Pest Elimination, Agawam, Mass., has fused her fascination with insects/vertebrate pests with her interest in sketching, a.k.a. “doodling.” In February, she put her insect knowledge and sketching abilities to task by challenging herself to doodle one pest per workday.

Nathasha Wright

The germ of the idea was born at PestWorld ’22 in Boston, when Wright presented on what she calls one of the most “boring” topics (pun intended) in the industry: wood-boring beetles. “I created over 100 doodles for that talk. I handed out the original laminated doodles to anyone who came to say hello to me after the presentation,” she recalled.  One of the attendees was Jason Muir of Western Fumigation, who, upon seeing one of Wright’s LinkedIn doodles, commented, “These are great! However, I prefer your bug drawing from PestWorld 2022.” This got Wright to thinking it would be fun to show off one doodle per workday on LinkedIn. Her followers were treated to everything from Indianmeal moths to stink bugs to raccoons.

“I would love to lie to you and say that my little sketches take five minutes a piece. That would be reasonable,” Wright said. “It’s more like five minutes per attempt, but 20 partial attempts may happen before I am satisfied enough with a result that I can show to another human being.”

One of the reasons it takes Wright so long is because she takes time to ensure her sketches are as accurate as possible (with some stylization). “With arthropods, there are some things that I always maintain: wings and legs originating from the thorax; centipedes and millipedes with the correct number of legs per body segment; spider eye numbers and arrangement,” she said. “Things that I sometimes include are the triangle of ocelli, palps, and semi-accurate wing venation. I very rarely draw tarsal segments, and very rarely count how many antennomeres I’m putting down, much to the dismay of technical artists everywhere.”

What’s impressive about Wright’s sketches is that her art training is limited to middle and high school art classes, but as she explained “for as long as I can remember, I sat at the front of my classes and drew in the margins of my notes. My teachers let me doodle with impunity once they realized I could answer their questions when they called on me.”

And that doodling enjoyment never went away. While in college as entomology major at the University of Florida, Wright would sketch out pictures for her presentations. “My peers liked it, but one of my seminar instructors said he didn’t care for it; at the time that hurt my feelings, but to each his own. I had a grad student pay me to create digital artwork for his exit seminar presentation involving filth flies — that was fun!”

This skill has also come in handy for Wright when she seeks out illustrations for presentations. “I can make pests do funny things (like hold a fork and knife) for a presentation that I couldn’t execute as well with a real photograph,” she said. “If I can’t use a photograph (because I don’t own the rights to it), or a photograph of what I want doesn’t exist, a doodle makes for a fine substitute to fill the space.”

So, after having created 21 sketches in February what does Wright consider her favorite? “I’m partial to things with exoskeletons, but I think my feral pigeon turned out the best. It was just the right mix of dorky and stylized,” she said.

And her most challenging sketch? She recalled, “Rodents. I have trouble with not making them look like fat capybaras or slinky shrews!”