Artist Challenge – Day 1

 

 

Yesterday I was nominated by the talented Briana Hertzog to post 3 images a day for 5 days. Briana and I met when studying at Virginia Commonwealth University in their Communication Arts program. I always enjoy seeing the imaginative work she creates and look forward to those that come. Along with my post I will nominate another person for the challenge.  I would like to thank Briana for this this is a great opportunity. I think it is a great time for reflection as I try to make decisions about how to direct my work towards a collective body of images.

Today my images show 3 different types of work I greatly enjoy creating:

drawing

photography

and collage.

Now I nominate an individual that if it were not for him I would not have met Briana because he introduce me to the idea of illustration and VCU’s Communication Art program. . . Mr Whitney Misch.

Anatomy on Society6

Last year I joined Society6. This online art community has a nice collection of self-published work. This site provides work by a lot of different artists, all of which have added themselves to the community. It is amazing to see how creativity flows throughout our society.

Society6 provides a means for artists to share as well as sell their artwork as prints, phone cases or hoddies/tshirts. While the artist does not always making a lot per piece -depending on what profit they set for themselves with each print- they are able to help create awareness of what they do. And while some people are of the opinion sites like this “cheapen” the value of art, I think it is a great way for artists to build a community, share work, and fund their addictive art habits. It almost feels like going to the farmers market, and buying locally.

For this post I just wanted to share a collection of Anatomy Art I found while searching the site:

Gross Anatomy by Asleepstanding

The Eye by Broken Colors

True Anatomy by Ben Geiger

Anatomy 03 by Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo

Being Human 3 by Anapt

Boy Next Door – Silhouette and Anatomy Love Painting
by Joy Chokchai

Society6 has a lot of work to share, don’t be afraid to explore more!

Html5 Mini Adventure

I have been thinking a lot lately about making an interactive by creating imagery in Adobe Illustrator and exporting it to a HTML 5 canvas tag. Then using JavaScript to add functionality. And I finally had some time to download and try out the Plug-ins! Check it out!

It may look like ‘just an image’ but it is not. If you right-click ‘inspect element’ you will see it is a canvas tag. If you look in the head tag  you will see the javascript used to draw the element on the page. 😀 I pretty excited. Nothing moves yet so it is pretty boring, but this is the beginning to wonderful interactive anatomical adventures! Once I figure out how each layer and each object is labeled, it should be pretty straight forward to add functionality.

One is provided by adobe, but the one I just used is by visitmix.com. When you scale the page ( ‘Command’/’Ctrl’ + ‘+’) the image does not scale with it. The Adobe Plug in is supposed to export images that scale.

I will keep you updated as I get more time to implement the other plug in, and as I get to add some functionality. But in the mean time feel free to check out the plug-ins:

Adobe .ai to HTML5

VisitMix .ai to HTML5

( And in case you haven’t noticed, I have a nice reference page building up)

Heart & Liver Drawing – Fin

Assignment 3 is complete! Well enough for critique. One thing with artwork is the infinite feeling of ‘more that could be done’.  First I would like to show you my shapes:

And now for the final piece (sans labeling):

Some advice I was given was to incorporate darker darks and some lighter lights, including but not limited to contrast. I did start to loose some over all shape of the heart as a whole when I got into working on the textures. This assignment was interesting because a lot of people executed the liver differently, and seeing the solutions to different problems was enlightening. A big problem with this task, was to figure out how to show that all the different veins going into the right atrium separately. Given that they are all in the same area, it was easy to misconstrue the drawing and lead the audience to believe all the veins joined together before entering the atrium. A successful solution, used by most, was ghosting the veins behind the left hepatic vein. Another individual displayed this even more successfully with a ‘cut-out’ of the left hepatic vein, showing where the veins drain into the atrium.

Over all though I feel confident that I put all I could into this piece by planning ahead, looking at lots of research and discussing issues during the creation process. I look forward to going back into this drawing and really punching up the over all form of the heart!

Drawing the Figure — part 1

 As a part of my anatomical visualization class we are having two sessions of figure drawing. Last Tuesday was the first, later today we will be investigating the female body. It was nice to get back into figure drawing. I need to look more at the figure, and pay attention to proportion. I keep ignoring/ drawing small heads.

The above image is intentionally in Anatomic Position. Our next assignment will involve taking this surface anatomy and using it to describe where the skeleton is, along with certain internal organs.

In Lab Drawings

A week ago today I, along with the rest of my class, had our first anatomy exam. The pressure was on to succeed, and with great perseverance, we ( the BVIS group ) did just that. It was a very exciting moment. We have since then proceeded on to the next section, which will cover the thorax and the abdomen.

The following are some drawings that I completed in lab while observing/ studying our cadaver.

Brachial plexus of the right arm.

The superficial dissection of the hand.

The femoral triangle, and surrounding areas.

Articulations of the knee.

In mediastinum with lungs removed.

Over the years I discovered I enjoy drawing so much because it is how I learn. And while I am not quite sure that the time I to put into the sketches really educated me on what things are, it did make me look at ( and realize) the things I did not know. Some difficulties I did find is once I drew specific structures ( such as the brachial plexus ) I would be left with empty space and tissue that I didn’t really want to visually describe. All this made me start thinking and turn to our atlas to understand how medical illustrators ‘fill this space’.

First Completed Assignment

This is my new workspace.

During the first semester, my core course load consists of Gross Anatomy, Computer Applications, Instructional Design and Anatomical Visualization. The first assignment I just completed consists of two drawings for Anatomical Visualization. Both are illustrations of the shoulder girdle. One is an anterior view depicting ligaments, the other is a posterior view depicting axioappendicular muscles of the scapula. The goal of this assignment was to choose a perspective from each view which best described the specified muscles or ligaments.

The process began with refreshing my understanding of perspective. This was followed by life drawing of an actual model (oppose to a virtual 3-D model). The model represented a scapula, clavicle and proximal humerus. This allowed me to understand the distortion which arises when objects come at the chosen picture plan ( this can be seen in my drawing of the anterior with the clavicle). I definitely enjoyed the technique and the process of using plexiglass, to represent the picture plane, and measuring the model. After I established my initial drawing, I used textbook reference as well as my bone box to fill in details. I am excited to hear reviews of my work tomorrow. I always find it interesting to see how others perceive what I end up creating.

Below are the final products: