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Viewpoint Veterinary Medical Illustration LIVING-ART My passion for biology and art, at school, bred this desire in me to explore anatomical structures in as creative way as possible. Science and art, and 'never the twain shall meet' they say...I've just married the two up into the most enjoyable way to earn a living! It's not all a question of sitting in the studio painting all day, there is a great deal of practical research involved in each assignment. After all, what self-respecting author/publisher wants to put their name to a book which is littered with already existing artwork that has been copied from other artists...a very dangerous path to follow, incidentally - as how does the artist know that the artist before him got it right? When I was at Art Scool, a tutor of mine told me a story whereby three seperate artists, in three seperate books, all produced an illustration of the female reproductive system and each one showed 2 urethras! This story shows the importance of personal research; I like to see for myself exactly what I am illustrating and if I look at books, it is for cross-reference only. When I'm working on a subject which has me really baffled, I have to stretch my imagaination and find my own methods to help me overcome anatomical drawing difficulties. The 'Rolling Sequence' in The Horse in Motion was a prime example. In the beginning I thought, 'how on earth do I show the rib cage and pelvis rotating as the horse lies down?' I started thinking about my first-year at art school and the 8 weeks I had spent in the 3D Model Making class. Three-dimensionality was the key thing, as here I was, faced with trying to show the horse's skeleton moving through different planes. Pipe-cleaners! 18 of them, wrapped around one horizontal and then a 19th pipe cleaner added lower down. Hold that in your left hand, rotate it through space and there you have an automatic rib cage and pelvis and every conceivable angle to sketch from. That's definitely an art/science bond if ever there was one. So, my time spent researching can sometimes exceed the actual painting time - and I still manage to meet the most neck-breaking of deadlines! I strive to illustrate my subjects in the most imaginative way possible and this is also a challenge. All too often I see books and think, 'well, it would have been far more interesting to have shown the subject like this, or that' and this again brings me back to the research criterior. You can't draw what you don't know. If I am confident that I know the subject inside-out first, then I can be far more courageous, thus producing an illustration which is both dynamic and original. Days spent in and out of theatre, paying attention to form and structure by dissection, ensures that the correct media is used to portray different tissues, from tonal carbon burnish for soft mucostic tissue, to photographic airbrush for the reflective chrome of surgical instruments. Because my training was of the 'old school', I was taught how to handle every different media, from dip-pen to airbrush. Although much of my work is computer-generated nowadays, my formal 'traditional' training of the craftsman is not wasted; I just apply what I know with the software I have - digitally. I never think that 'computers have taken over'; if you don't have the foundation traning, then you won't get the maximum out of the resources that digitally produced artwork offers. Computers have just broadened my professional horizon. At the end of the day, the nature of my job is to accurately describe anatomy, physiology and surgical procedures with the use of only a paintbrush/mouse and I have found my own key to success in a secret which I will share with you: I pretend that there will be no accompanying text. In this way, I go out to illustrate as much information as possible without the artwork becoming cluttered and confusing. The work is certainly challenging, has me pulling my hair out sometimes, but it has the reward of having my mind constantly stretched and being kept abreast of the most modern scientific advancements - and of course seeing my work in print. Many people say to me 'it must be very difficult to draw the insides of a dog' but I explain that, like us, they are mammals and are not that far removed from ourselves anatomomically speaking. The same organs are present and perform the same functions; they may be proportioned differently, but on the whole we're pretty similar. Besides, I don't look for the difficulties when I'm painting, I'm too busy enjoying what I see and wondering how best to interpret this miraculous living machine on to paper. After all, we are
- man and beast - living art. Related Reading:
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