Someone had a little too much fun with the Blur tool...

While taking a break and catching up on my latest celebrity gossip, I tripped over a slide show on the most shocking photo re-touching of celebrities from Newsweek. As mentioned in yesterday's post, Photoshop is an incredible tool for photographers. However, when you are pasting celebrities on the cover of fitness magazines and talking about body confidence or how they "never work out", and smooth away the bumps, lumps, and take off a dress size, how legit can that be? Everyday people try to attain this beauty and can't attain them even with hard work. Society has brought about this level of perfection, which seems isn't even able to be achieved by the celebrities themselves! Is is wrong for them to want people to see how they really are? Is it a career killer to have flaws like everyone else does?

Now don't get me wrong, I love Photoshop and I expect for there to be retouching in the media. Who wouldn't want some images of themselves touched up a bit to make themselves look better or even be put in better lighting? However, I think there is a line on what should be done when the individual is supposed to look natural and real. Glamour shots, artistic photo shoots, and advertising where fantasy is to be mimicked, I get it, understand it, appreciate it and yes, sometimes enjoy it for the image they they created, however does Faith Hill really have to have her arms thinned? Please take a look at the slide show to see even more blunders here.

Photo courtesy of TheBlueThing.com. Faith Hill Redbook Photoshop Before and After. Rebook magazine cover July 2007.

Birthday Suit

Happy birthday to me! Yep, today is my 24th birthday. Though I am choosing to be alone tonight in my apartment working on homework, don't fret, I had a great day. I was surprised at work today when my fellow co-workers came in with a personalized chocolate cake with a brownie and candles glowing on top. I was so surprised and it made my day. You guys are great and the cake was fantastic too (Especially since otherwise I wouldn't have had one. Buying a cake when you live alone doesn't last long!).

Today is the only the beginning. Tomorrow will be a celebration with friends new and old around Chicago. I have a new party dress and I'm going to rock it no matter how cold it is outside. Then the rest of the weekend my family is coming to the city. My entire immediate family are coming down: Mom, Dad, my brother and my cute, precious, funny little dogs, Molly and Duke, will be here. We don't have any concrete plans yet, but I know it will be fantastic. Let the birthday celebration begin!

In honor of my birthday, above is a Photoshop-manipulated image appropriately named Birthday Suit. This image was created by photographer Mike Stowe who took a beautiful image of the female body and manipulated it to create a interesting, stunning and shocking piece of art. It is wonderful to see how powerful Photoshop can be. Though it reminds me quite a bit of Ed Gein, a serial killer who lived in the town ten mere minutes away from my hometown, the image is well done and holds my attention; what art should be.

Photo courtesy of Photo.net. Birthday Suit. Mike Stowe. 2008. Photoshop.

Echo-echo-echo-echolocation

Echolocation is a complex process and an even more difficult one to illustrate since most of the mechanism works with air, sound waves, and nerve impulses. However, I wanted to do something with my favorite animal in a biological illustration, so I was determined. Working with my newly experimented graphic style was much easier this time so that wasn't much of an issue like last time. Another factor that made this illustration difficult was the lack of accurate bottlenose dolphin anatomy; most of my findings were schematic in nature. This was why my initially-planned first illustration became my last. I needed to do lots of research to find what I was looking for.

What do you think?

Echolocation mechanism of the bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Lindsey Pionek. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. 2009.

Oh Dura!

Here is my first illustration completed for Advanced Illustration for this past and long gone summer semester. This illustration depict the dural membranes and sinuses of the skull, which are vital to take waste products and extra fluid away from the brain (sinuses) as well as helping the brain stay put (membranes). I wanted to work with my new graphic style of line and transparencies in medical illustration. Needless to say, it was more difficult than I would have expected in the way that I had to practice my restraint in creating too much detail. Plus, the view is very different angle compared to typical anatomical illustrations and photographs, so finding references was a bit of an issue too. Osirix became an essential tool for obtaining an accurate view for the illustration. In the end I am happy about the end product and I like the clean lines and subdued color palette. It is a very different style than what you see in most anatomical illustrations today.

Dural Sinuses. Lindsey Pionek. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. 2009.

Max Brödel

Max Brödel is an incredibly important person for an individual going into medical art field. Actually, he is so important that he is known as that father of medical illustration. Max came to the US from Germany in 1894 with no formal medical education and initially illustrated for a gynecologist, Howard Kelly, at Johns Hopkins University. There, he started the first medical art department in the nation. His illustrations are detailed, intricate, precise and informative through his use of pen and ink or carbon dusting; two of his most well-known techniques. It only makes sense that a budding artist learns through copying the pros which is exactly what we were asked to do with an update.



Instead of working like Brödel did with carbon dusting (aka "painting" with tiny graphite shavings in layers, we were asked to copy his art using Photoshop. The first illustration is my rendition of Parovarian Cyst Between the Ampulla of the Tube and the Outer End of the Ovary (what a mouthful!) and the second is the original piece (not a very good scan; in the book the illustration is darker). Though I feel like I have done well, I don't think I am able to compete with the master... at least not yet. Ha ha :D I learned a lot about painting in Photoshop to create the best continuous tone and texture and I am even more impressed with this man's talent. This assignment solidified the reason I am studying biomedical visualization as well as opening my eye to detail to create beautiful, yet informative medical art.

After looking for some interesting photographs for ovarian cysts, I found this blog called Tumors Galore! Quite an interesting name and subject for a blog. Caution: if you are the type of person to get queasy with this stuff, do not venture, but if you are interested it is quite a find!

Parovarian Cyst Between the Ampulla of the Tube and the Outer End of the Ovary, Lindsey Pionek after Max Brödel, Adobe Photoshop*

*Image used as reference is from the book Operative Gynecology, 2nd Edition by Howard Kelly © 1906.

Concept Art and the Copyright

I have been a little off lately; this semester has been busier than I would have ever expected it to be. My life has been crazy recently even during Spring Break which was supposed to be a bit of a break, though I should have been working on stuff more. Therefore it is catch-up time as usual. This week was special in the way that I am starting some great big projects. Above are three concepts for what I would like to do with one (actually two) of them. Two of my professors are collaborating together to create an assignment in which we have to digitally visualize a physiological process: one to be 2d used for print and the other 3d for viewing in HDTV. I chose to illustrate intestinal villi absorption. I tend to be pretty enamoured with intestines this semester (if you haven't noticed, look for yourself here, here and another on the way) and it's not even intentional! I've always been interested on how the food we eat is transferred to energy, so I jumped at the opportunity to create this piece.

I found out quickly that this whole assignment was going to be a tough one. Medical illustration is all about accuracy and working at the cellular level is even more of a challenge to do that since we don't know exactly what histology look like when living and in situ. Creativity and accuracy in structure and proportions is what I was struggling a bit with while coming up with the concepts, but I am aware of that now. But that's what concepts are for: they are just a starting point to present issues and a potential final project. I had a great time painting in Photoshop to give my bland pencil sketches some color and character and creating concepts are really helpful in the thought process instead of just jumping in and it helps with creativity by working on more than one. I'm thinking making these concepts will save me a lot of precious time. The concept I will be working with is the topmost image.

I also added a © and year to my watermarks. Why you say? During my Business Practices class a local lawyer named Eric Scott Swirsky came in to give us a presentation dealing with copyrights and contracts. In the art field, creators can be taken advantage of from individuals using images made by someone and using it as their own; I guess it can be related to as plagiarism of art. Therefore, medical illustrators have to educate and protect themselves to evade this situation. It was a very informative talk and I learned a lot of essential information that I will be able to utilize now and in the future.

All in all, a good and busy week.

Concept designs for intestinal villi absorption, Lindsey Pionek, Photoshop, Spring 2009