Category: Faber-Castell


Joined a Zoom meeting last week thru UIC (Univ. Of Illinois at Chicago) with PRN Peoples’ Response Network which featured live interviews of doctors & nurses who have been in Gaza. Gutwrenching. Sketched while listening. Sireen Jaber a RN spoke of her experiences taking care of patients of all ages that were brought to the hospital and the horrid conditions they worked under. Dr Chandra Hassan, a surgeon at UIC, showed graphic fotos & footage of operations & the wretched conditions inside hospitals still in operation. Up close images of shrapnel wounds, burned victims, amputations on men, women, & children, many enduring these operations with lack of anesthesia. Surgeons forced to perform operation holding only blades because scalpel handles were regarded as “dual use” implements. Doctors and nurses would be flooded with 20-30 or more severely injured patients because of the devastation of weaponry used. Dr. Hassan assured that the death count didn’t include huge numbers still trapped or buried under mountains of destroyed buildings. Some of the footage included the constant hum of drones. The narratives & imagery were not edited by news outlets sensitive to offending sponsors & were especially difficult to take in. Despite the capability of medical staff from the US & foreign countries, many of those treated die in the hospital & after surgery because the conditions make stemming infections a near impossibility & insufficient post op care and medications lacking because they are on some of the thousand of trucks prevented from entering into Gaza. Hellacious.

So I have been drawing from cadavers in the Humany Anatomy Lab at a local hospital. The cadavers once brought to the lab go thru progressive dissections by medical students over the course of a year before they are finally interred. It is an immense privilege to have access to the donors and their families gift to the hospital that future generations will become knowledgeable, capable surgeons and caregivers, raising the quality and capability of health professionals.
As an artist who began my adulthood in college studying science for three years before transitioning to fine art, I have had a constant desire to know and understand who we are. From the first time I saw the artwork of DaVinci, Michelangelo, Eakins, Rembrandt and the work of Vesalius I was mesmerized by their quest to know intimately the workings of the human body. In my science labs, I never dissected or participated in investigating any creature larger than frogs, I changed majors before upper level biology, but I knew I would be open to the opportunity should I have that chance. I now have that extraordinary opportunity and have participated about a dozen sessions with the possibility of also learning at a second University.

 

So, during my experience I have drawn cadavers that have been in the lab for months, being handled and dissected by students learning their craft. At times it has been very difficult recognizing specific anatomical features.

And it is that which is at the core of this post. Some have said that computers and digital simulators may replace the hands on of cadaver dissection and investigation, but I do wonder if there is something to be gained by students learning how to navigate through a body both visually and manually once that body has suffered extreme trauma and wear.

I have several anatomy books and charts, all of which have very clear illustrations and photography of bodies that were dissected by extremely talented professionals with years of practice. It’s tricky enough to find nerves and minute features under the best of circumstances, but add hemorrhaging, bodily fluids, other complicating factors and you’re up against real challenges. Now imagine you’re not working on a cadaver but a living human being that you’re trying to keep alive. A person who has been ripped to pieces by flying metal fragments, crushed by masonry, heavily bruised by severe blunt trauma, and caked with mud, concrete dust, glass shards, oil, with multiple compound fractures. As if that doesn’t set in panic and have your adrenal gland working overtime, locate that in an operating room ill equipped to to handle that because of makeshift lighting, insufficient supplies, dozens of severely injured patients waiting to be attended, very loud sounds of anguish because there is a shortage of anesthesia and fully conscious patients are enduring horrific wounds and fully invasive procedures when doctors have run out of anesthesia. Still not harrowing enough? Some of the doctors were medical students who hadn’t completed their degrees nor training.
I watched footage of these conditions in that jaw clenching presentation by Dr. Hassan and his colleagues.

The idea that an antiseptic, digital environment will be the best preparation for the shock and awe that could await a person of medicine for those moments when life throws a challenge at them.
The first thing that get you when you enter a cadaver lab is the smell. They have changed the chemicals but the smells are still unsettling. It’s an alert that you are preparing to have to channel your focus. I lost 90% of my sense of smell from Covid and it has barely improved in the three years since, yet when I unzipped the cadaver bag on my last visit I was  braced by the scent wave that engulfed me. The cadaver was lying in a shallow pool of chemicals and the tissue discoloration can vary greatly from the previous cadaver. Those are part of the inquiry into the reality of what it is to be of this world.

My gratitude to Rush Hospital and the men and women who step into this hallowed profession.

Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens on paper.

Somebody needs to remind me why I allow myself to be drawn into just this sort of entanglement. used a Graf von Faber Chevron fountain pen with a waterproof ink formulated for fountain pens, Pitt Artist Pens for the varying greys and white in a Stillman & Birn Nova Series Beige sketchbook.

A slight distinction can be noticed in slight hue shifts in the grey range from warm to cool to help with distinguishing between the far bank and the ree and shadows in the water.

Well, this may be helpful. I worked with videographer Hiromi Sogo to give y’all some sense of how I manage, or try, to sketch people who are not posing but rather engaged in some activity. This I do and have done, as those who follow me know, for more than four decades. This practice has helped me in many ways, but greatly in one in particular. When I had the chance to draw in court, I was already up-to-speed with capturing people in motion.

Here are close ups of the drawing used in the video: just a note, when transferring the video to this platform, some of the soundtrack drops out; a glit I look to correct and avoid in future videos. Learning curve stuff, my bad.

 

As mentioned in the video, I number the drawings in the order they were begun. To my eyes, there was a lot of “meat on the bone”, I.e. an interesting looking dude holding great poses about concentration, wearing a shiny, puffy jacket made more dramatic by the raking light that accentuated surface features with the cast shadows of near and mid distant structures. Drawing  multiple perspectives or postures on the same page makes the transition from one position to the next easier as the subject moves and/or returns to a similar posture allowing you to add or complete the drawing. Afterwards, it also makes for better side by side comparisons since you’re not flipping back and forth to compare and contrast drawings.

 

You can see the preliminary or searching sketch for which I used a light Flesh tone. That establishes the general silhouette and will be a place holder if the subject suddenly moves just after I’ve begun drawing. I managed to knock in a good deal of his face and hair but he moved before I could get to his hand. When he returned to this pose about 45 minutes later, my “notes” were in place and I was able to pick immediately where I’d left off.

 

Evident in these drawings ing s is my use of several tools, one very important amount them are my fingers as you can see the marks left by my fingerprints.

Those fingerprints create hatch marks that are quite distinct from the hatching created with a stylus be it pen or pencil. Varied marks have great appeal to me in that they can enrich the drawing and  their combined effect is to increase the descriptive nature of the marks. But another, very crucial reason I draw with an array of different tools is to take advantage of the inherent attributes of a given tool and by doing so save myself time. Most important in drawing a dynamic subject where you’ve no idea when your subject could move or altogether leave, is to draw efficiently. Why overwork a small nib when a big brush affords greater coverage. Fingerprints create multiple hatch marks simultaneously that are also very difficult to emulate with the stroke of a pen. An inky finger will come in handy if you should want a smudged tone. Add to this collective of mark making, a variety of hues and the drawing gains in richness and description. For the combined effect simply examine the close up below of figure #5.

 

Drawings were done done with a Faber-Castell Basic Black Leather fountain pen filled with DeAtramentis Document Black Ink and F-C Pitt Artist Pens on a Stillman and Birn Gamma Series sketchbook (S&B is now a subsidiary of Clairefontaine) which takes ink and pencil nicely and can handle watercolor, plus has a little pebbly surface that creates nice textures when smudging or scumbling.

Don Demonstrates Faber-Castell PITT monochrome charcoal set

Don demonstrates Faber-Castell pens as he draws on public transit. We also get to see him lick one of his drawings to prove its waterproof qualities. And check out those shorts!

Faber-Castell :: On the go with PITT artist pens

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