Buttnekkiddoodles

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.

OK, so some days you walk into a life drawing session, maybe relaxed, maybe full of fire, sit down to draw and…”who the f*ck is noodlin’ on my sketchbook?” Even within the course of 3 hours, either Misters Jeckel or Hyde could wrestle away your crayon and push you off your bench.
In the first entry above, first row first column, the model, C, is full figured, very pale and somewhat like alabaster in that she seems to absorb light and seldom has very dark shadows. To make matters trickier, at the Palette and Chisel, the primary venue where I go to draw from the figure, there are scads of fluorescent lights which kill any dramatic chiarscuro. So with C I usually have 2 concerns. (I concede on trying to catch a facial likeness, as portraiture has never seemed to be my bag.) First, try to convey her sculptural, solid form while maintaining her feminine characteristics. Second, avoid overwhelming a translucent presence with tones that are too deep or harsh. Many times I draw her interior contours in grey to keep a tonal delicacy. If she has dark fabrics as a backdrop she becomes a fleshy lightbulb. On this occasion I did a countour drawing of her first with a bold-point, gel pen, some pentimenti, otherwise content with initial lines and proportions. All fine and good so far, then skin tones swept in with a light warm grey Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush Pen, used a cool grey PAP on the fabric between her feet and a medium grey for the draped crate she sits on to contrast with her thigh. Twenty five minutes, again, I don’t know if you’d recognize the drawing as C were she to pass you on the street but I can live with the effort. Glance to the right of this drawing, first row second column, or the one underneath that, second row second column, or below that, third row second column and you see things going haywire.
I also attend an open life drawing session elsewhere in Chicago where the model begins with gobs of 20 second and 40 second and 60 second poses. On and on this goes for the first 2 hours until the poses start slowing down to 15-20 minutes. I usually skulk into that joint with a sense of dread of facing my comeuppance. Yea, yea I know, it’s good exercise, good for the craft. Hey I draw on the bus and in public on a regular basis but I psych myself out for some reason at this place. And I’ve had some ego-bruising moments that reminded me of bad matches in high school wrestling where some muthafugga was filing my nose off on the mat. So the drawing at the top of the second column is a page where I’ve reworked a pair of 60 second poses that irked the daylights outta me. You can see a quick study of one of the artists in the group (whose drawings were kickin’ my ass) cause I needed a pause from all that tricky flesh. Later, when I was reviewing the days’ work I obliterated or reworked that and other pages by adding anatomy or wigs or tattooes or high heels or beards or text or just about anything that would make light of the carcrashes that had taken place during the sessions. The standing figure in the second row second column is five timid minutes worth of reworking areas for God knows what reason and stacking a torso on some stumpy little legs. I can’t seem to box in basic shapes or just allow the line to run freely. To the right of that drawing are a couple of 3 minute gesturals that I returned to play with during the model’s breaks, adding a barrel and bone studies to hide my misery.
But it’s the drawing at the bottom of the second column that really shows that at times, two minds are at work on the same page. I’m watching my tones there, I remember moving at a fair clip, quickly notching in some details, torso’s o.k., hands fine, fan and heater good, no fussing around but who stuck the shrunken head on while I went to the bathroom. And how about her left knee? I seem to remember thinking while I was drawing “no…that’s not quite right.” Things seem to be cool, then you’re going off the rails. I mean, it’s why we love drawing from life, no? Decision making with the clock ticking.
At some point, I’ll post a cluster of drawings I’ve done over the years while in transit. Till then, bon chance with yer doodles. Don.