A visit to Ostia Antica, the old port of Rome

This is just a quick sketch, on a hot summer's day, earlier this month during a short visit to Rome, Italy. The sun was chasing me and I had to keep moving to stay in the shade of my favourite tree.

Ostia Antica is a huge open-air archaeological site with the remains of an old port that previously shipped food and people from around the Mediterranean up the Tiber River to Rome, for almost two thousand years.

I generally make my own line drawings and maps for the papers I write, so recreational sketching is actually good practice that helps in my research (and vice versa).

Do professional scientific illustrators enjoy enjoy making art as a recreation? Or do they read scientific papers for pleasure, while sitting under a tree?