I’m finally getting these images of hearts up that were designed for a powerpoint presentation about normal heart anatomy and flow contrasted that of with persistent truncus arteriosus. Minus wrestling with Powerpoint over some issues, it was more exciting than it sounds. All were done in graphite/photoshop.
Normal heart, showing the internal right side
Surgical fix of truncus arteriosus heart
Flow of blood through truncus arteriosus heart
Media: graphite, photoshop
It’s ironic that the baby’s head is never shown, when the surgery is all about getting the full term fetus out, but it never became necessary to show the head.
Cesarean section surgical illustration, with emphasis on suture layers
Painter is my new favorite design software- it mimics traditional media much more accurately than Photoshop can! The point of this project was to base an illustration on an already inked surgery step. Here are the results, using mostly oil brush options.
Tying off of ovarian vessels
Everyone in the scientific and medical illustration committee should be aware of this fantastic contest, organized by the NSF. Among the winners in 2008 were Drew Berry, Janet Iwasa, and Linda Nye.
Five different categories are currently open: Photography, Illustrations, Infomational Graphics, Interactive Media, and Non-interactive Media.
Submission is open as of February 2009 and the final deadline is September 15, 2009. After all the judging, the winning entries are published in Science’s Feb. 19 2010 issue.
And of course, the site’s previous winners are fantastic to peruse and admire.
Here’s a good idea: define and exaggerate the visual dynamics of your drawings and sketches, farther than you initially believe they need to be. An analogy to music performance is the need to always push acoustic dynamics further.
Even if they’re rough sketches, the client needs to be able to read the illustration and have a good sense for the aesthetic subtleties you’ll be using. You also may never know what their eyesight is like – just because it looks good to you doesn’t mean it’s getting the point across to someone else. How do you know when you’ve pushed contrast and tonality enough? A nice trick is to walk 20 feet away from your drawing. If contrast, lineweight, and dynamics are right, the main content, if not all details, should still be very visible. Simple but trustworthy.
Our current project is a pig surgical illustration piece, which is far more interesting than it sounds. And through the sketches and critiques for this project so far (to be posted eventually), I’ve slowly come to realize why lots** of medical illustration pieces lack a sense of cohesive layout, design, and type sensitivity:
It’s because medical illustrators might never need to deal with it. In fact, they often shouldn’t deal with it- it’s not their job. Their clients don’t need or want a great sense of unified design.
A sketch during the last critique that wasn’t simply piece-meal illustration work received criticism because the different surgical steps wouldn’t be able to be rearranged.
The actual designing is done by art directors and layout designers, and typography is likely done by a different salaried position, too. Surgical pieces especially need to have a great deal of inherent flexibility in how they can be arranged and designed for journal publication.
In these cases, all that design education that says you need to consider the entire space of a given composition is a moot point. And if you do try something crazy like have images overlap each other, the workers for the journal might just chop everything up, thus destroying your handiwork.
So the rule of thumb is design and consider everything visually that you have power over, but allow for flexibility, because in the end, you probably can’t design it all.
**I want to emphasize that there are a great deal of medical illustration pieces that are gorgeous through and through, both from current artists and those back in the day.
Rendered in watercolor. I was pushing the limits of the mat board – I hear Strathmore 500 is the better way to go for more technical watercolors like this. However, I am pleased with the mix of warm and cool but subdued color palette.
Intestinal Mesentery Dynamics: color variation
One of the wonderful things about being an artist, and what you realize you’ve lost once you step into the illustrator realm, is the complete autonomy you have over the work you sign your name to. In the end, illustration is about using your own artistic skills, style, and sense of aesthetics to realize the visual goals of someone else. It can be frustrating dealing with art directors – or even worse, clients with little to no visual art background – when their ideas and visions about an illustration clash with your own. You’ve brainstormed and become committed to a composition, technique, or image, and changing what you’re doing can mean both excess work and a compromise of your aesthetic values. These changes can range from minute stylistic fiddling to a preference that wrecks a composition. The worst case scenario is having your signature on something that doesn’t even feel like your own, or ending up with something that disappoints the eye.
The good thing about the art world is that as many wrong ways there are to accomplish something, there are at least as many right ways. It’s easy to latch on and become protective of your own ideas, but in reality there are other successful ways of solving the given visual problem, and failing to realize this can stop you from seeing more and better possibilities. It’s important to feel confident about the work you’re doing, but it’s equally important to maintain a creative flexibility. To add a corny line, look for the potential, not the limitations. Part of the joy of being an illustrator is finding a successful and creative solution within a given set of constraints. If the client wants incredibly colorful, think stained glass style instead of Carebears rainbow. If they want gaudy sparkles and flashes, give them tasteful highlights and bits of eye candy. And if they want comic sans (heaven forbid this should ever arise in medical illustration), offer to handwrite out some text. In this way, even if what comes out of the printer isn’t what you originally hoped for, you can still end up with something that fits with the needs of the job while being something you’re proud to have your name next to.
This was done with traditional pen and nib- I like the line variation evident in this that you can’t get with technical pens. I’ve seen much more heavily lined intestinal pieces, but I’m a fan of relatively minimalist line work myself. I’m almost getting a hang of this finicky medium.
Intestinal Mesentery Dynamics: Line Variation
On exhibit now at the Morris Museum of Art are illustrations by J.C. Leyendecker, tagged as America’s ‘other illustrator.’ Although well known during the early 1900’s for magazine covers, The Saturday Evening Post, and advertising illustrations, newer design trends and personal situations eventually pushed him out of the spotlight; today Norman Rockwell is much more well known. See the Museum website for more info about it: http://www.themorris.org/art/leyendecker.html
What struck me most about his technique, particularly in is Kelloggs Kids series, is that he hardly blended ANYTHING, and it worked for him. Each paint stroke was set down very purposely as a distinct plane/highlight/shadow. With your nose close to the canvas it was almost abstract, but just a few feet back, the sense of form and light was really striking. It’s a good lesson for someone like me who tends to blend things obsessively.
More links with better images:
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa119.htm (includes one of the adorable Kelloggs kids)
http://www.jcleyendecker.blogspot.com/ (some great large images)
