Happy Lunar New Year!

Wishing you health and happiness! :)

Cubes of...pee?

For pathology class, we continued to explore our topics through tissue cube studies. I am working to visualize the progression of autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), a condition in which numerous fluid-filled cysts develop in the kidney from parts of the nephron and/or collecting ducts.

Tissue cube study

graphite on paper, 11x14"

To be honest, I wasn't overly inspired with this assignment compared to my "nephron forest" (my initial sketches are equally uninspired, so I shall spare you, dear reader ;D). Perhaps it was a mistake to try to draw the details of every single little cell (talk about tedious work!) - I'm not too thrilled with the overall result. The perspective also got a bit wonky... Ah well, we shall see where the final pathology illustration takes me!

PS. Happy Turkey Day! :)

The forest of nephrons

...or "forest of pee" as some like to call it. For pathology class, we were asked to draw a tissue landscape. I chose to draw kidney tissue and quickly realized I'd be tackling an environment packed with squiggly tubes. After my (genius) classmate made a comment about how the nephron and collecting duct system looks like a tree, I started imagining what it'd be like to look up in a forest of nephrons.

nephron forest
graphite on paper, 11x14"

Process: I am a ridiculously messy artist when I first start. The scribbles in the bottom left were actually my first conceptions of this "forest":


Even when I'm trying to be clean, it still turns out horribly messy. After completing the sketch with blue Col-erase pencil and graphite, I had to scan it and take out the blue channel. I then printed it and traced over it. I need to learn to work more cleanly the first time around (and thus, more efficiently)!


Truthfully, I'm not very happy with the overall result. It seemed like a good idea at the time?! In hindsight, I think it would have been more effective if I showed more depth or used fish-eye/wide-angle distortion to make you feel like you're standing in the middle of the forest, not looking from the outside. I also had some paper issues during rendering and just couldn't get enough contrast in it (I used super smooth paper for graphite rendering, yes I should know better. :P). The lighting was also a challenge - I think I'll make some simple cylinders in Maya or C4D to test out more dramatic lighting. I did scan the lines before shading so perhaps I will try a Photoshop version if I ever have time!

Making babies!

School has begun - which means there will be more biomedical communications work on the way (good-bye personal/anime drawing time)!

There was much talk about making fetuses (or feti as some like to call them) and babies this past week... As a warm-up for our medical-legal course, we were asked to choose an image of a full-term fetus from Williams Obstetrics textbook and rotate it by 90 degrees. This "mental gymnastics" exercise proved to be quite challenging and headache-inducing! Our professor wanted us to practice looking at reference images and drawing them from different perspectives - an important skill in medical-legal illustration.

Here are both the original image (left) and my transposition (right):

Fetus!
graphite on paper, 8.5x11"

Process: I began blocking in the major shapes on a photocopy of the original image. I then pulled lines across the page to mark important landmarks. Once all the major landmarks were in place, I eyeballed it from there. The foreshortened legs gave me a ton of trouble (note evidence of excessive erasing at the fetus' left foot...) so I decided to make a crude plasticine model. I also referenced another image from William's Obstetrics for the fetus' back. After I was reasonably happy with the sketch, I traced over it and scanned the lineart into Photoshop to fix more errors (pointed out by a friend I hassled)! My digital rendering looked terrible so I printed it out and shaded it with graphite instead.


There was some debate during critique about how I portrayed the legs. The legs in the original look rather bendy (our perhaps my distorted perception was influenced by my love for Hyung Tae-Kim's illustrations lol) so although incorrect, I decided to keep them bendy in my interpretation as well lol! There are some other issues with my fetus but I think it's time to move on from this assignment and tackle the next ones!

tissue studies

Here are some tissue studies i did for surgical class back in January. i've just been too lazy to scan them, but was finally forced to when i realized i had to hand in my sketchbook for marking! i drew these mostly from surgical photos, but also a couple from illustrations. The goal was to study and understand the visual characteristics of different types of tissues relevant to surgical illustration. i decided to mess around with different materials for this assignment. i really need to work on my pen & ink skills - i can never get as much line variation as i'd like...


cut skin & subcutaneous fat
graphite + prisma markers + sakura microns on paper


skeletal muscle (cut and uncut)
graphite + prisma markers + sakura microns on paper


bone (cut & uncut)
graphite + prisma markers + sakura microns on paper


tendon & cartilage
graphite + prisma markers + sakura microns on paper


blood vessels (arteries & veins)
graphite + prisma markers + sakura microns on paper

(And yes, i worked waaay too hard on this considering it was only worth 4%...lol!)

i need to make a few changes to my final render for surgical and neuro classes, but will be posting them soon. My website is also almost done! i can see the light...

surgical sequential illustration

It's the end of the month, so it's time for another (small) image dump! School has been keeping me excessively busy and sleep-deprived, but i really should try to update as i go...

Anyway, here is the final surgical sequence i have been working on. It's been through maaaaany revisions, but there will be more changes, i'm sure (aka getting feedback from professor tomorrow morning...). The surgical illustration course has been a painful one thus far because of the importance of tiny details (e.g. sutures with thickness = bane of my existence). But at the same time, i feel like it somewhat suits my obsessive nature lol!


Aortic valve replacement
graphite on paper, each 11x14" + labels in Adobe Illustrator CS4

i am currently working on a layout that combines a couple of these steps, and i'll be producing a full greyscale tonal render of this soon (translation: it's due next week...)

open heart surgery

This is one of many sketches i've been doing for our surgical illustration course. There are abundant errors, so i'm still working on it! And i'm rather haphazard when it comes to pen & ink... Also working on that!


aortic valve replacement (surgical field)
sakura microns on tracing paper, 11x14"

Okay i think i'm done art-dumping - i panicked when i realized it was the end of February and that i haven't been updating... xD;;;

carbon dust!

So i finally officially completed my first drawing assignment of the year (with the rest seriously piling up...)! Here is the final rendered illustration, originally a sketch and CG - please excuse the small size and watermark, as this stuff is for my future career (unlike my other random art xD):


dissection of lung hilus
carbon dust + labelling in Adobe Illustrator CS4

This illustration was done in carbon dust, a medium that is apparently not really used outside of medical illustration (i couldn't find any good online image galleries of Max Brodel or Dorothy Chubb's works D: ). i found it to be pretty similar to graphite powder, so i'm tempted to use it for my personal illustrations now that i have the materials... we shall see!

i don't really like how the scan turned out, so here's a WIP photo:



And for those who are curious, here are some of the tools involved in a carbon dust drawing:


(Can you tell i was procrastinating?! i swear i was practicing my layout/design skills for school! However, i did this in Photoshop CS2 instead of Indesign, which is like a major faux-pas in design?! lol)

furrow

furrow
conté + charcoal in cartridge paper, 18x24"

This drawing was somewhat based on the sketch from my previous post. i haven't touched traditional media in a while, so this was a nice change of pace (except for inhaling all that charcoal dust and fixative spray. And i didn't know that fixative spray would make my paper all curly...). i was originally going to do this sort of thing using graphite powder on watercolour paper. It probably would've had a better, more refined quality to it. However, i didn't want to buy a massive jar of graphite powder and was too lazy to make it myself... >.>;;;

untitled

untitled
ballpoint pen on paper, 5.5x8.5"

i rarely post things from my doodling sketchbook, in which i only use ballpoint pen - so things tend to be messy and not well thought-out. But i decided to share a page. i'm planning to use this in some sort of painting with dramatic lighting. Maybe in acrylic? Digital? i haven't decided yet but i feel like i've been doing too much digital work recently!

uglee fish!

Some silly looking fish I never got around to posting. :)


red perch
acrylics on canvas, 8x10"


uglee fish gift tags
colored pencils on bristol board


bakafish (unfinished)
colored pencils on bristol board

Knees and failed caricatures! :P

Knees give me a really hard time, they're all bumpy and complicated. I'm not really happy with how I did the actual shading, so more practice is in store...


Graphite pencil & Prismacolor warm grey markers on paper, 8.5x11 in.

I also tried caricatures for the first time in my life and WOW is it ever hard! Also probably doesn't help that I tried it on myself first (and it doesn't look like me, really...), assuming it's easier to pick out defining features of a stranger, someone you haven't known for 20-some odd years. Also, I had no idea what to do with the body! I think I'll practice on politicians first or something...


Prismacolor warm grey markers + Staedtler watercolour pencils on paper, 8.5x11 in.

The extremities

So I finally sat down and did a hand and foot study last night, because these two body parts are definitely weaknesses of mine! I've been avoiding this practice... :(

I always end up making the body of the foot look like one flat surface, which of course it isn't. And fingers still get the better of me a lot of the time... More hands and feet in my future, that's for sure.