Published March 2nd, 2009 at 7:05 pm in Anatomy, Biology, Surgery with no comments
Tagged with heart, Sketch, watercolor
I tried rendering a few of my heart sketches on foam board – I’ve heard some fine artists get great results on this media, but they ended up being much looser than what I was going for. Not bad in and of themselves, but not great for the current project.
External view of normal heart anatomy, classic AP view
A cutaway view of the same heart
internal view of a heart with persistent ductus arteriosus
The last one is the most interesting – ductus arteriosus refers to the merged aorta and pulmonary trunk that’s present during normal heart development. Problems only arise when the heart doesn’t finish fully developing. Notable is the single great vessel feeding to both systemic circulation and pulmonary vessels, the ventricular septal defect, and the hypertrophic right ventricle, which needs to compete with the left for output. In these situations oxygenated and deoxygenated blood is mixed, the lungs are flooded, and all other circulation doesn’t get enough. There are sugeries to fix this that force the plumbing to be what they should, but unfortunately survivability in the long term isn’t great.
Published February 27th, 2009 at 5:15 am in Anatomy, Biology, Illustration, Imagery with no comments
Tagged with Drawing, Sketch
Here’s a hail back to the master draftsman Lenoardo da Vinci. Lovely style and sense of form and light, of course, and occasionally some very creative anatomy.
All images below via http://www.drawingsofleonardo.org/
View of a Skull, c. 1489
The Principal Organs and Vascular and Urino-Genital Systems of a Woman, c. 1507
Study of Arms and Hands, c. 1474
Want more da Vinci?
WebMuseum
Wikimedia Commons page
Geneva Foundation
Louvre: close look at Mona Lisa
CGFA
Published February 25th, 2009 at 8:50 pm in Illustration, Sketch with no comments
Tagged with Drawing, Illustration, Sketch
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.
Published February 14th, 2009 at 5:55 am in Illustration, Imagery, Sketch with no comments
Tagged with Anatomy, heart, heart model, Sketch
Happy Valentine’s Day - we have in the department an incredibly accurate heart model – it’s based on a wax mold from the real thing. Here are some quick-ish sketches.
Laeral heart model sketch
Posterior heart model drawing
Internal heart model drawing
Published January 31st, 2009 at 5:15 am in Illustration, Sketch with no comments
Tagged with Art, Drawing, Image, Medical Illustration, Painting, Sketch
Below are both the original sketch and a color study for a recent project illustrating some Metzenbaum scissors spreading apart a bit of intestinal mesentery. The render was done from observation during pig surgery, memory, and photos. The final is in 3 variations – line, tone, and color, all done in only traditional media. It was surprisingly refreshing to get away from Photoshop completely for a project, especially when digging into some watercolor work and figuring out the palette for the highly vascular tissue.
Finals to be posted later.
Intestinal Mesentery Dynamics: preliminary sketch
Intestinal Mesentery Dynamics: color study
