Tagged: drawing from life


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.

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Head studies from cafes and public transit this past week.














Been running about, trips to my doctor who still see something in my tests he’s not comfortable with. Potassium numbers are up the down, same with PSA numbers. In guard about my kidneys. Anyway, mostly time to just grab brief sketches here and there.
Recent development that I’m excited about- joined with a new gallery. And that means I hope get back to working on a body of new paintings and drawings. Perhaps a lot less of the random sketching. More on that as it develops.


  • Met with architect friend Andrea Deng by the Arco Della Pace. Sat in a cafe across the street and sketched while enjoying cocktails and a buffet.

After finishing my sketch of the arch, I turned and captured the scene behind Andrea. Andrea overheard the provocatively clad young lady and her friends mention going Salsa dancing later in the evening.

 
Drawn with fountain pens, DeAtramentis ink, and Pitt Artist Pens in à Hanemühle watercolor sketchbook.


President Biden, I’m wondering how you’re doing and where you are on this day of days. Me, I’m in Milano and I seem to recall a story of a family of refugees; in particular, an infant, a young mother and an older gentleman, seeking sanctuary.

Drawn on site in Milano, Italia with fountain pens and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens

 
Revisions. “Work that page!!” I urge my students to make the most out of your sketchbooks and studies. This ledgerbook I’ve been drawing in since 2017 is getting worked over pretty thoroughly. I can’t leave alone pages of the quick 1-3 minute gesture drawings or sprints as I call ‘em. And if a figure drawing can’t stand on its own then I jump into any open space that begs to be assailed. Tends to keep things nice and loose. Robust. It’s a learning process in which I don’t want to be prissy or treat my studies as precious. The studies over the last 3 weeks of Elizabeth, Tor, Gretchen, and Bobby were slung onto sketches from 2017 and 2019. All done at the Palette and Chisel. I may like a figure but still feel the page needs work. Or, I may like a page as it’s developing but am disheartened by some of the studies. The first page, for instance, the drawing of the model on the step ladder irritated me for a few years and last night I dropped a pose of Bobby on it that I felt was one of my better studies this last month, and the gray background only served as a challenge to work highlights back into his shoulders and torso. The page of Elizabeth and Gretchen was fun and I liked the color play but Gretchen doesn’t look like Gretchen. And while I let go of getting a likeness if the structure and values and marks all add up to a well constructed head, but….I have drawn Gretchen scores of times and I confess, it bugs the bejezzus outta me that I miss the mark on her likeness. Maybe if I actually spent less time on the bloody internet and more time drawing.
      Consider me a devout practioner of pentimento and palimpsest.  sprawling the thought process out onto a page. 

As for medium used, all the usual suspects are here, fountain pens, Platinum Carbon and DeAtramentis inks, grease pencil, and Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens.

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