Anatomy and Art

I just thought this image was neat and I had to share…

Today was ocular day in the anaplastology lab with Bob!  First we painted irises and pupils.  Then we chose from a drawer full of template shapes and made a mold.  Typically with a patient you would do this from an impression.  You can actually use algenate right on the eyeball itself.  After we made molds, we mixed up acrylic and put it all together.  The iris I chose to use is currently curing in low heat water and pressure, but here was my second choice.  I would have gone with this one, but I rushed the pupil at the end there, and went back to the previous one.

It’s actually kind of tricky painting a light brown eye.  White tends to come up blue.  And yellow often comes out green.  So you have to play up the red and ochre.  You actually use basic oil paints along with a liquid we just called monopoly.  It’s technically acrylic but at a very strong monomer to polymer ratio.

I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out tomorrow!

I’ve always had an appreciation for skulls.  From back when they were a sign of good horror movie, to today now that I study them.  The more you learn about the skull, the more elegant it’s design reveals itself to be.  Bones in general are like that I suppose, but the skull in particular is just beautiful.

Here are a few of my own images from one of the skulls I had at home for a while

more of these can be found at http://snapshotgenius.com/gallery/skull-A188

There’s a sale this week at Cafe Press, which means there’s a sale at the Anatomy and Art store!  Remember you can pop on over to the store any time by clicking on the Merchandise link in the upper right corner of your screen.  Check it out!

We were asked to sketch out the eye and nose with anatomical labels for my anaplastology class this week.  I thought I’d share my drawing here.

I know it’s a little busy.  But if you’re studying these structures too, hopefully it can help us both.  If you’re having trouble reading any of the labels, try clicking on the image for a clearer view.  My references include Netter’s Anatomy Flash Cards, Fundamentals of Facial Prosthetics, The Anatomy Coloring Book, and Wikipedia.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve been working on learning Flash lately. In my own development with the program, I just figured out how to create a button to stop an animation and play it again today. So I’ve still got a ways to go there.  But just tonight, I stumbled across a far more advanced interactive.

The interactive is one that covers the muscles of facial expression.  It’s called  Artnatomy, or if you choose to view it in Spanish, Artnatomia.

Now first of all I’m psyched to see a project like this expressed bilingually.  I may well be coming back to it for reference, when I attempt my own Spanish translation with the animation I am doing for my project research.  A few of the muscles right around the nose look to be labeled a little bit differently than I remember them from my own studies, but I think this may simply be a matter of translation, or even using different sources in Spain.

Secondly, I like the artwork, and the ability to toggle between a schematic or naturalistic model, and with or without the skull.   The site’s design puts a few steps between you and getting to the application, but just follow from the home page through your selected language, and into the application, where you will most likely want to view “Level II” so that you can get the various emotional expressions tied to these muscles.  If you are like me, you’ll spend at least a few moments thinking but hey, sometimes doubt looks differently than that, or people don’t always look the same when they’re about to cry, but I guarantee you that you won’t find a single text book covering the same material that doesn’t make you question similarly.  And once you get past that natural argumentativeness, I think you’ll agree that this is a really cool interactive project they’ve put together here.

So, it’s been quite a week out here, and I found myself up late last night working on my very first 2D animation in Flash for a new class that I’m taking.  Well, between the learning curve and the late of it, it wound up being quite the bizarre little exercise.  I did learn a lot in making it though, and I suppose that was the point over all.  If you’d like to see it, take a look

One thing that did particularly catch my attention was in exporting the file into Quicktime format. You’ll notice the YouTube version has some artifacting going on in it. That happened every time I exported as a Quicktime. YouTube doesn’t accept the .swf file format, so I went ahead and posted this one anyways. I’ll have to post further when I know more and can explain just what’s going on with that.

Y’know I just keep coming across this, and well, I thought this time that I would share it here.

http://www.butter.de/fileadmin/kampagnen/eizo/eizo_kalender.swf

It would seem that the medical imaging company, Eizo, has teamed up with ad agency Butter to create a truly unique pin up calendar.  All I can say is congratulations guys, because this promotion is certainly making the rounds.  And as well it should be!  What a fun idea!

Well wow, today was cool.  It had been years since I’d last shown my paintings, but today I got to do just that.  And, I even got to do so from the comfort of my own living room!  Sure, it’s a little weird rearranging your home for an artwalk, but I have to say that overall today was just great.  I loved being able to move art into it’s show space on my own schedule.  I loved being able to keep white wine chilled in the fridge and bring it out throughout the heat of the day today.  I loved getting to know my neighbors.  It wasn’t a big day for sales, mostly people just bought postcards, but I did get some interest in possible future sales, one of which I think will happen in the next week or two.  So that’s really cool.

I used to be very wary of ever selling my work.  Now I love it.  There is nothing more motivating to create more work than the empty space left on your wall from where someone has bought something.  Sure, the capitalism angle can be hard to take, and putting price tags on your pieces can be agonizing, but in the end, after your prices have been decided, when someone says they’ll take something and you know they’re really going to like it, it’s just a really great thing.

And honestly, I just have to say I was very pleased at how much of the living room conversion to a gallery came so naturally.  I think I may have underestimated so many years of showing at the Brewery Artwalk back in LA in group settings.  I guess I didn’t realize just how much I’d learned from those experiences, especially never having been in charge myself.  But I have to say, I felt on top of this.  Part of that was just good synchronicitous timing.  And choosing to only show paintings certainly simplified things over all.  No printing rushes, no last minute framing, all I had to do was move the paintings I wanted to show into the living room, and clear out the things I didn’t want in there for the show.  In the end, there were fifteen of them up on the walls.  Then I moved a curtain to set the space of where I wanted people to be, set up a little table with cards, postcards, snacks and an email sign-up sheet and voila, instant gallery!  I even happened to have a perfectly sized art board piece left over from past projects to make a sign out of and some fancy lights to lead people toward my door as the sun went down.

It’s really been a lovely day.

And because I’m still in show mode, here is a link to the gallery where I have every painting I’ve finished in the last decade posted.  Tree #5 is brand new and was created pretty much just for the show.  As it turns out, desolate little dried up trees are far more popular in sunny Los Angeles than here where people suffer an actual winter, but I’m happy to have made it just the same.  Feel free to peruse.

http://snapshotgenius.com/paint/

That’s right, we’re doing an artwalk right here!  I have the best neighbors in the world to have put this all together, and this Saturday I will be opening my door to any and all who would like to come in and view some of my paintings first hand.  This one is not an anatomical art show.  This one will just be focusing on paint for my part of it.  You can read more about the event here.

http://artadventureevents.com/

And I hope to see you Saturday!