Student Works: Jen Wong

Jen Wong is a junior (starting this fall) illustration student at the Rhode Island School of Design. I enjoy her unique style very much. She is meticulous with details but still captures motion in her drawings–something not easily done together.

“I’ve always been very interested in art, and have also been into extremely detail-oriented illustrations, so for many years I thought that scientific/medical illustration would be perfect for me. Now I’m thinking about getting into book work, and especially children’s books, but I still enjoy drawing from nature.”

Here are a few examples of Jen’s drawings:

When asked about how she creates such drawings, she says:
“I like to draw from life as much as possible (as opposed to drawing from a photo) so I frequent RISD’s wonderful nature lab. I usually start by sitting down with a specimen and begin drawing from one obvious part (usually the eyes) and just go from there. I like to just work from what I see, using a thin ball-point pen or pencil, or sometimes a rapidograph. All these pieces were just done on my own time, with the exception of the 50 series sample [below].”

“The set of nine one-inch-by-one-inch insect drawings are only a part of a larger 50 series done for a freshman drawing class. I got to explore ten different insect specimens that I obtained from the nature lab by doing five close studies of each. The drawings are to scale, and very small (my drawing teacher had me bring him a magnifying glass).”

Student Works: Kristin Luther

Kristin Luther, currently a student in the Biomedical Visualization program at UIC, explains the carpal tunnel syndrome through her illustration below. This illustration was made during her second semester in the program.

Here is what Kristin says about her work:

“We have been learning all about commonly used techniques within the field of medical illustration. The technique I used for this piece is line art made in Adobe Illustrator. I started with a scanned sketch, which I traced over (using the pen tool) and then added flat and gradient fills. The message is to explain some of the causes of carpal tunnel syndrome, and the audience is the general public.”

More of Kristin’s works can be seen on her website at www2.uic.edu/~klierl2 and Kristin can be reached at kristin.luther08@gmail.com.

Visiting Edward S. Ross

A month ago I paid a visit to Dr. Ross. I had done some illustrations for him over the past year for publications in Annual Review of Entomology and Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences (see No. 29) and was warmly welcomed by him and his wife Sandy. During this afternoon visit, we sat down with tea and bread in the Japanese style living room which he built. As always, he was very eager to share stories from the safari and spent much time showing me his illustration and photography works. To my surprise, he is building yet another annex to the main house to store the massive amount of work. I had brought a list of questions for the interview, but in the end I just decided to take lots of pictures and let the pictures speak for themselves.

Dr. Ross sitting in the Japanese style house. He is very fond of Asian cultures and knows a lot more than I do about my own culture.

After our afternoon snack, we went to his home office to see how he keeps the massive amount of information in order. File folders are the key. I’m not sure how I would’ve kept information about 350,000 species of insects. By coincidence, he pulled out an illustration I had done a year ago.

Next we took a walk outside. This is truly the work of someone who loves the outdoors. Everything you see here was his idea–either he built it himself when he was younger, or he built it more recently with the help of others. Either way this is pretty amazing. The cabin (left or top) was where I stayed for a year when helped illustrate new species. It was pretty relaxing to stay in such a beautiful place with a flexible work schedule. Of course, you have to be disciplined, but there was no strict 9am-5pm schedule and you can take a walk whenever you want. It’s very different from the overworked grad student life I’m living right now.

This is the lab that houses the entire collection of embiids. There is an estimated 350,000 specimens in there. The lab is much smaller than you would expect, but insects are tiny, aren’t they?

Here is the office where I did all my illustrations. It is not the inside of the lab, but rather a garage converted into a work space.

Dr. Ross showing his pen and ink illustrations of insect anatomy (shaded drawings beneath are the works of a different illustrator). The labels were all cut and pasted onto the illustrations by hand. Now illustrators are scanning these files to create a digital archive. As part of this process the hand-glued labels are removed in the computer and new labels inserted digitally. This is done not only for consistency with the new illustrations, which are entirely labeled in the computer, but to allow room for change if any of the old illustrations are to be republished. Not only the font can change from publication to publication, but sometimes classification methods change as well.

Picture of Dr. Ross and me as I’m about to head home.

Interview–Trudy Nicholson

I am absolutely thrilled to have Trudy Nicholson, one of the top scratchboard artists in the field of natural science illustration, as the first person I interview for this blog. Her name comes up over and over again when people talk about scratchboard art, so I decided to contact her and she kindly agreed to an e-mail interview.

Trudy Nicholson majored in fine arts at Columbia University and turned toward medical art school at Massachusetts General Hospital. During the thirty years she worked at the National Institute of Health, she also accepted freelance assignments in natural science illustration. Having established relationships with clients with her natural science illustrations, she continued to focus on the subject after retiring from the NIH. Here are a few examples of her works in both medical and scientific illustration.

Poster design, ink with overlays for color
Surgical illustration for Dr. Paul Sugarbaker, ink on scratchboard
Sycamore Annual Cycle, ink on scratchboard
Cat and Locust, graphite pencil on scratchboard

In addition to sharing her artwork, Trudy Nicholson also shared details about how she approaches her work:

me: “Did you do much self-promotion when you first started in the field? What can you recommend for people to get their names out there?“
Trudy Nicholson: “When I first looked for freelance assignments I went to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and talked to any curators willing to listen. This finally lead to connections and some work. Becoming a member of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators was a great help, which continues to this day as networking within the Guild informs me and others of prospective jobs. Despite internet marketing, which wasn’t available when I started freelancing, I think that networking is an important method for finding either staff or freelance work.”

me: “What kind of references do you use when researching for your next project?“
Trudy Nicholson: “To start an illustration I determine which animals and plants are to be used in what kind of setting. I get photographs of the subjects and if possible see the animals. Observing animals gives a sense of their anatomy, movements, behavior, stance and expression that photographs can’t quite give. With source material in hand I compose a very rough sketch of the whole composition concentrating on light and dark areas and keeping the emphasis on the main subject. Dark subjects or shading placed next to light areas gives contrast and drama to the scene. I gradually refine all elements until the final illustration has fine detail and the subjects are portrayed accurately. A book on scratchboard that I refer to often and that I recommend for those looking for varied approaches to the medium is Scratchboard for Illustration by Ruth Lozner, Watson-Guptill publications, 1990. The author has interviewed and included the scratchboard art of 75 illustrators giving a perspective of the many directions that artists can go using the same surface and tools.”

me: “You are best known for your scratchboard works in natural science illustration. Is scratchboard your favorite medium and why?“
Trudy Nicholson: “My art has centered on animals in their habitats for publication, usually in nature related books. I work almost exclusively on white scratchboard using ink or, less often, graphite pencil. I started using scratchboard for medical work because of the ability to easily make corrections, either large or small. Gradually it has become my media preference, as I’ve become captivated by the beauty of black and white and the potential for a wide range of textures, using white and black lines and dots combined or juxtaposed in multiple ways. Since most of the books that use my illustrations are financed by grants, which are notoriously not ample, I can’t expect the same compensation that I would receive doing medical art. These books give the public information and understanding about nature that I would like to contribute to. Black and white art, being less expensive to publish than color, is preferable for books that have a smaller budget.”

me: “What tools would you recommend for someone who wants to experiment with scratchboard?“
Trudy Nicholson: “It’s necessary to use good quality scratchboard such as Claybord made by Ampersand or Essdee, an English scraperboard. All tools should also be high quality. When using ink I prefer Gillott 290, 291 or Hunt 103 pen nibs and Higgins Black Magic ink, or Koh-I-Noor rapidograph pens with their own ink. These tools can be substituted by other good quality makes. As a scratching tool I use x-acto blades #16 and holder. This blade can be held at different angles to make extremely fine white lines or wider lines. It takes practice to master textures. When starting to use scratchboard, patience is helpful.”

me: “Since you work mostly on a white surface, how do you make a flawless transition between light and dark tones?“
Trudy Nicholson: “Since scratchboard is a correctable medium, it’s possible to experiment with compositions and textures, which adds to the excitement of doing the artwork and also to the final results. Adjacent textures can be blended eliminating a visible border between them. Even the joining of solid black and stark white can be softened with graduating grays created by crosshatching and stippling. Crosshatching has become for me the staple for creating many textures. Crosshatching is made by crossing a series of parallel lines with another set of parallel lines at an angle. The degree of that angle will determine the resulting texture. A very acute angle will produce a moiré pattern that can give the effect of fur, feathers, distant foliage or water. Other textures can be built on the foundation of crosshatching using either white or black lines or dots over the crosshatched texture.”

Mouthwash as Pen Cleaner?

Pen and ink is one of my favorite media. I love the clean lines you can get with a good technical pen, but cleaning Rapidographs is always such a pain. Typically I just use some rubbing alcohol, but when I have pen emergencies and no rubbing alcohol, I go for the mouthwash. It works, and leaves your pen nibs minty fresh. I started buying different kinds of mouthwash just to see which brand works the best. The usual blue/green ones like Scope and Listerine are ok, but I find that Tom’s of Maine mouthwash (which by the way is alcohol free) was able to remove some old ink residues that even rubbing alcohol can’t remove. It’s also clear so you can see your pens better. Now don’t get your hopes up too much because I have yet to find something that completely removes old ink and leaves those pen nibs and plastic ink cartridges shining flawlessly. I’m curious to see if anyone has tried anything else that works.