Think Floyd

My Editorial class is winding down, and I'm getting close to resolving the journal cover I've chosen to create for it. For the assignment, we searched through various journals, or thought up topics of interest, and chose one that interested us. I chose synaesthesia, which is a topic that has always interested me. Synaesthesia is a condition in a small group of people in which one sensation being triggered (in the example below, sound) automatically triggers another secondary sensation (color, below) at the same time. I think it's a really fascinating neurological condition, but I don't want to get into that here.

After going through several (very different) iterations, I ended up with the image below. I've always liked the iconography of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album cover, and I was really happy to work with it. I put this into a cover template that I re-created in Adobe Illustrator of the journal Neuron.



I started the piece by painting it in oil paint on a 22"x28" canvas board. Then I photographed that in with a high-resolution digital SLR and digitally airbrushed it a bunch until I got it close to how I wanted it to look. What's uploaded above is not my final version, but I really wanted to upload something new, so I'll just replace it with the next version after I have gone through my critique and modify it.

If I drank coffee it would be out of an 'Ugly Mug'

So in the cold cold month of February I had my several week '3-D/Sculpture' class. It was supposed to end in the middle of last month, but (again) because of the massive snowstorm we got here in Baltimore, the finishing touches were delayed a month. Essentially the class was about getting exposure to working with three dimensional media for medical topics.


The first project was very similar to one I had in undergrad, which was to make a plaster cast of my face. In this case, I made a patina that is supposed to resemble oxidized copper, even though the piece itself is cast in gypsum. I had to remodel my nostrils, part of my lower lip, and my eyebrows with metal carving tools and drills, because they were not cast as perfectly as they should have.



The main bulk of this class was to create either a medical model or a prosthetic (my professor for this course is an Anaplastologist in my department). I chose to make a nasal prosthetic, because I was really interested in the process, having never seen it done before. I won't go into much detail, but basically the final prosthesis I made is a modification of my own nose to fit a hypothetical "patient" model who is missing one for one reason or another. The prosthetic is made of several layers of colored, translucent silicone, with extrinsic coloring on top as well to match the skin tone of the "patient". If this were to be for a real person, adhesive would be spread around the paper thin edges and it would fit snugly against the patient's skin so that is was almost imperceptible to a random passerby. I am generally happy with how the prosthetic came out, and have definitely learned a whole bunch from the experience.

Digital Love

Hey everyone. I realized that I'm going to be starting some new projects soon, which means I won't have anything substantial to update for a little bit, so I wanted to get something up in the meantime.


This is a digital painting, done in Adobe Photoshop CS4. It was practice for a larger assignment that will be posted in the near future. The whole point was to get used to Photoshop as a painting medium, and to accurately reproduce an autopsy photograph, particularly different tissue types and realistic colors. It really is that colorful inside the human body. So, that's all this assignment was, really. Mindless fun, no instruction or teaching purpose, just practice.

Water ... and colors ... together?

I just started my watercolor class last week. The first assignment was to get used to painting with watercolors (I have never done a serious watercolor painting before). We had to pick a plant and paint it. At the supermarket I picked up the last remaining tomatillo in the cleaned-out produce section the night before the first crazy Baltimore snowstorm 2 weekends ago.


There's not much to say about it ... it's a tomatillo!

Here's some older stuff ...

Ok so I've been out of the art loop for a while, and I wanted to update with something, so I found a few pictures of some portfolio pieces I gathered to apply to this program. When I'm able to take pictures of more recent stuff I want to upload those as well. I'll try to list this stuff in chronological order:

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This is a charcoal drawing from freshman year, about 48"x36". It's a bedsheet nailed to the wall, and was fun as hell to draw.


Next I have a couple portraits, and a skull, from one of my painting classes sophomore year. They are maybe 10"x13" or so, I can't remember offhand. They are painted with oil on foam-core, and are more-or-less 3 hour/1-class paintings.


For the end of sophomore year painters had to do a large self portrait for the spring show. This is mine. It's (3 of) me in Boston, and took a long time to paint. I look pretty goofy, and it's definitely one of those paintings I look back at and want to change a million things. Anyways this is 72"x54", oil on canvas.


Next up are two pieces I did when I was studying in Venice junior year. The pigeon is a woodcut (except for the background which was made with scored cardboard and ink) and is from the Piazza San Marco. He's a pretty relaxed bird. It's about 9"x11".


And then from my painting class there I have 45 minute plein air oil sketch of the walk along the Zattere in Venice, across the water from Giudecca. Oil on canvas paper, probably about 7"x4.5".



Lastly from senior year I have one of many figure drawings I did. Graphite on paper, 24"x18" ... although I zoomed in on it, there's actually more white space around her.


That's all that's worth showing for now. I don't have many good pictures from other things I did from undergrad, but I'll take them next time I get a chance. These are just a couple from my portfolio to get into my current program.

Smithsonian Sketches

This Friday the first year students in my program were taken to the Smithsonian Institution Naturalist Center in Leesburg, VA for the day to relax--before Anatomy class starts--and sketch from the animal specimens they have there. The Center itself is not all that big, but there are so many types of animals and bones and minerals to look at that it was pretty overwhelming. Anyways I made several sketches throughout the day:

The first drawing I made was of a skull of a Smilodon californicus (sabre-toothed tiger), which I picked both because I was still used to drawing bones from the hipbone project, and because I really like prehistoric animals, a lot. This probably took about 40 minutes, and is done in pen.



Next I drew a few much quicker sketches, probably about 10-15 minutes each, if that. They are of Martes foina (beech marten, top), Colinus virginianus (northern bobwhite, left), and Ondatra zibethicus (muskrat). All done in pencil.



After those I felt like doing another long drawing, so I drew an armadillo because they have really interesting anatomy (and they're related to the extinct glyptodons, another prehistoric mammal). Drawn in pen, and shaded with graphite.



Lastly, I drew one of the two giant polar bears they have on display. This one stood probably 8-9 feet tall, and was really impressive to look at. Another quick pencil sketch.



That's all the sketches I have, because I spent a lot of time mesmerized by the collection. It was definitely a worthwhile trip.

Ashes to Ashes, Carbon to Dust

Hi everyone! I wanted to keep this blog to show what I am up to at school (and my art in general) for the next couple years.

Well, I recently finished up the first project for my graduate program in Medical Illustration. For the first 2 weeks we worked on the traditional Hopkins initiation assignment, which is the drawing of a hip bone using carbon dust. To start the project I hung my assigned hip bone in front of a gray piece of paper and lit it how I wanted with a desk lamp. Next to the set up I taped a piece of paper and, while keeping my head directly in between the bone and the drawing, I compared proportions until I ended up with a drawing that represented my exact view of the bone set up. I had never drawn with such a strict viewpoint before, and wouldn't have considered it if it hadn't been required for the project, but it worked pretty reliably.


Once the proportional sketch was done, I used a light-box to transfer it to nicer charcoal paper. Then I started with the carbon dust. With a broad paintbrush I built up thin layers of gray with the carbon until it approximately matched the tone of the background paper behind the bone. From there on, I used increasingly smaller brushes to work out the volumes of the bone and to define the value of the shadows and body, and I pulled out highlights with erasers, and smoothed tone with a chamois. After a lot of work and sore eyes, I ended up with the piece below (approximately 11.5" x 16.5"):



Drawing with carbon dust was a new process for me, but it basically felt like I was painting the entire time, even though it was with dry media, which was neat. It reminded me (in a refreshing way) of some early assignments at I had in undergrad. I am happy with how the piece came out, and I am hoping to do more drawings using this technique when I get a chance. However I will note that this drawing is nothing like the majority of projects I will be doing. This was an exercise in pure observation.

Soon I will be starting up Anatomy and a couple of other medical classes, so it will be a while before I get to upload new school projects, but I'll hopefully have some personal pieces in the works in the meantime.