To be honest, I am not much of a writer at all. In fact, I'm a pretty horrible writer. So why have a blog? I am a huge fan of Drawn!, an illustration and cartooning blog I visit daily. They constantly update with links to artists' sites and blogs...of which I have neither! Seriously, you'd think a budding illustrator would have some record of her art on the web for someone to find! Second, when I was telling people I would start in August at Johns Hopkins for Medical Illustration, the most common reaction was excitement that slowly morphed into confusion. "Oh wow, Johns Hopkins! Now...what will you be doing again?" Hopefully this blog will shed some light on what exactly medically illustrators do.
I guess the best way to describe what they do is to show a current project! Our first assignment is a traditional continuous tone drawing of a hipbone. Every class has done this project since the program began 98 years ago. Although they began with different bones, these particular bones have been around for at least the past 30 or so years. Certain teachers will walk in, look at a piece in progress and say "Oh my gosh, that's my bone you're drawing!" It's kind of neat.
This is a photograph of my bone at the correct drawing POV: (my images are from my phone, so hopefully the colors aren't too bad with the light!)

Hipbone Week One-Preliminary sketch
Day 1: basic proportions
You would think this part would be easy. Just draw like I always do. Yeah, that's what I thought. However, the goal of this project is not to have what looks like a great drawing of a bone. It's to have a drawing so real and to scale that it looks like a photograph of the bone, with correct tone, lighting, and proportion. This means that our proportions have to be perfectly 1:1 with our bone, and all angles have to be correct. Here it is at the end of day 1.

By this point, I'd made a ton of changes, but you'd never notice them unless I pointed them out, like the Obturator foramen (the big "loop" at the bottom of the bone). See how it's much longer and skinnier in this one? Perfect proportion is not easy!

Day 3: details, lighting and final sketch
Ok, now I was just showing off. This is just a prelim sketch, so it didn't have to be so detailed. But why not, right? At this point, the proportions are pretty spot on. It doesn't look much different proportion wise from the first one but, believe me, it is.

5 comments:
AWESOME...I can keep track of what you are drawing at JHMI. THANKS and LOVE, Mom
yr art still manages to floor me, even when it's a hip bone.
Jodi,
Your talent amazes me:) Glad you love it up there--wait till winter:)) How's the apartment and all? Your mom told me all about your fun trip there.
Thanks for sharing your amazing talent with us. Starting a business don't forget to get a custom logo.
logo design
I am happy to see this blog, thanks for share.
Buy law essays
Post a Comment