Tissue Studies in ink

The following series of studies were for our surgical illustration course. Some of these drawings were copied from the work of established medical illustrators and whenever this is the case, I have indicated the source. My intention in doing this is not only to learn from the best, but also give tribute to these amazing masters of medical art; as they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

^after Rong-Zeng Li^
^after K. Yu, from Grant's
^Photo reference
^after H.A.Thomas
^after Frederic Delavier
^Photo reference

Buggy Bug

Here is a stippling exercise drawn from an image in the Guild Handbook of Scientific Illustration.

Fishy fish

Some stippling practice from last semester. This beautiful fish was one of hundreds of amazing scientific illustrations from my Evolutionary Biology textbook in undergrad. This one's for you Joyce!

Heavy...

This was a very quick sketch done from "Strength Training Anatomy" by Frederic Delavier. A truly inspiring work of anatomical illustration. I felt this image was an appropriate representation of how my colleagues and I are feeling right now about the myriad of deadlines approaching...

Shell Study

While making a lengthy phone call, one often becomes fixated on minute details of the nearby environment. On one such occasion I happened across a romantic pair of snails nestled between the planks of a wooden bench.
Using the photo for a reference, I first made a sketch which was inked to practice contour shading. Although simple forms, getting the angle and twist of these shells just right was tricky.
I attempted a color version of the subject, but unfortunately some of the red/violet hue seeped into the white, so the specular highlights became purple! Thank goodness for photoshop!

Ink practice

I drew these hearts out of our lecture notes from Anatomy last semester. I've been trying some traditional pen & ink drawings lately, and even though it is very frustrating it has a look that can't be beat. For certain tissues my shaky hand actually helps!

Valentine Heart

Here is a quick sketch of a heart with exposed chambers. I did this after burning my eyes out working on website layouts for many hours on the computer. Sometimes you just need to feel a real pen on some real paper.

Didactic

A little BMC inside humor.

Studies

As a student in the Biomedical Communications program at the University of Toronto, I am now part of a great lineage of artists. Here are some sketches from a former U of T medical artist (from back when the program was called Art as Applied to Medicine) Louise Gordon, who has published several fantastic books on anatomy for artists.

1st Post

So here it is, my very first blog post. I am starting off with the basics - pure contour drawing. The above piece was sketched during my first week of living in Toronto Canada!!! I've always liked blind contour drawing, without ever looking at the paper until the sketch is done, and when you get one like this that actually looks like there was a plan, it makes you smile, or at least grin...