When uncertain what to draw at the end of a long day, sometimes I steal an idea from the amazing Katie Green and just record the obvious information of the day. I put my own twist on her idea, adding nocturnal attire.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
The We Inside of Me
I've mentioned this before, but I think it's worth revisiting. In my medical school course the students and I watch an incredibly interesting TED talk titled, "My Stroke of Insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor. The talk forms the basis of her book of the same name. What an amazing opportunity: to hear a neuroresearcher narrate the experience of having a stroke.
I use this talk on the day we discuss doodling, right brain and left brain, and how drawing enables you to access input to and output from the brain other than what text alone allows. So while Dr. Taylor is delivering her talk, we doodle.
Below is my doodle (colored with pencil) whilst watching Taylor this year,and last year's doodle (colored with watercolor paint) is below it. Though I find myself skeptical about some of Taylor's conclusions, and her tone at the very end, clearly I also find the talk intriguing and inspiring.
I use this talk on the day we discuss doodling, right brain and left brain, and how drawing enables you to access input to and output from the brain other than what text alone allows. So while Dr. Taylor is delivering her talk, we doodle.
Below is my doodle (colored with pencil) whilst watching Taylor this year,and last year's doodle (colored with watercolor paint) is below it. Though I find myself skeptical about some of Taylor's conclusions, and her tone at the very end, clearly I also find the talk intriguing and inspiring.
I use a few other audio and video clips for doodling. This year I've added another TED talk, this one by doodle revivalist Sunni Brown, to the mix, should you be curious why I have medical students doodling.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Drawing Conclusions
I've posted before about my struggles with representational drawing, particularly of people. I'm much more confident with buildings, though I could certainly still use some perspective help there as well.
Enter the gentle but powerful force of nature that is Riva Lehrer, at the Comics & Medicine conference this past June in Chicago. Aside from being an amazing portrait artist, Riva is an awesome human being - kind, funny, reverent and irreverent, smart, genuine, warm, a great and interested listener as well as talker. In short, Riva disarmingly genuinely human. I quickly grew to adore her. Her most recent show, Mirror Shards, is stunning, and features, among others, this image done in collaboration with Alison Bechdel.
Riva has a terrific command of human anatomy, obviously.
Riva knew of my struggles with drawing, and she so kindly invited me to attend her figure drawing classes at the School of the Art Institute.
Gesture drawing, in fact the use of the word gesture in this context, was completely new to me. Here is my first attempt, first drawing, first day of class, a "pretest" of sorts to show where I started.
You can see that the torso is a mess, and I was clearly more focused on the detail of the facial features. I realized pretty quickly that I was drawing from the inside out, a shadow frame, without, despite being a nurse, evidence of the body's interior.
That's where we started, talking in detail about the architecture of the body. I was pretty okay when we drew Norbert, Riva's skeletal model. He's a great model, too, because he never assumes those flashy, dramatic, and frustrating foreshortened poses that the real models love to show off. Norbert is a simple guy.
In looking at the architecture of the body, we considered what evolution has done to the skeleton- both animal and human. We looked at what joints exist where, what their natural ranges of motion are, how movement of one joint impacts the others in terms of bearing the weight of the body's muscles and organs. This is all content I knew from nursing school, but learning it in this context, as it applies to accurately re-representing the human form, that felt all new.
Enter the gentle but powerful force of nature that is Riva Lehrer, at the Comics & Medicine conference this past June in Chicago. Aside from being an amazing portrait artist, Riva is an awesome human being - kind, funny, reverent and irreverent, smart, genuine, warm, a great and interested listener as well as talker. In short, Riva disarmingly genuinely human. I quickly grew to adore her. Her most recent show, Mirror Shards, is stunning, and features, among others, this image done in collaboration with Alison Bechdel.
Riva has a terrific command of human anatomy, obviously.
Riva knew of my struggles with drawing, and she so kindly invited me to attend her figure drawing classes at the School of the Art Institute.
Gesture drawing, in fact the use of the word gesture in this context, was completely new to me. Here is my first attempt, first drawing, first day of class, a "pretest" of sorts to show where I started.
You can see that the torso is a mess, and I was clearly more focused on the detail of the facial features. I realized pretty quickly that I was drawing from the inside out, a shadow frame, without, despite being a nurse, evidence of the body's interior.
That's where we started, talking in detail about the architecture of the body. I was pretty okay when we drew Norbert, Riva's skeletal model. He's a great model, too, because he never assumes those flashy, dramatic, and frustrating foreshortened poses that the real models love to show off. Norbert is a simple guy.
And this is where things started falling apart for me. It all seemed logical, and like it would all flow back together, a simultaneous awareness of interior and exterior, but thinking about drawing in this way seemed to be destroying the tiny, weak grasp I had on representing the human body in charcoal on paper. It looked and felt really crappy sometimes. And it got worse, as you can see here - unless the model this class was a fetus, which I don't seem to recall. Perhaps I'm drawing my inner urge to crawl into a fetal position and weep.
But I forged on. I decided no matter what, I was going to be the honey badger of drawing. I just wasn't going to give a damn, I was going to just keep doing my drawing thing, regardless of how ugly it got or how it almost killed me.
Riva taught about how to think when drawing - about gauging proportions, and relationships of objects in space. We learned a few tricks for measuring and comparing - how to look. And see.
I had to miss several classes due to my mom's brief illness and travel to Leeds, but in the classes I did attend, it started to slowly, painfully, start coming back together.
And then I did this one, with which I was quite pleased. Certainly not perfect, for example despite being a big guy, I don't think his shoulders were that broad. But whatever, I liked this one.
There's this moment we discussed in the final class, where as an artist you decide, as you look at the work you are creating based on the body you are looking at, whether your loyalty is ultimately going to be to the body as it sits before you, or to your drawing. Riva wants us to be loyal to the body, at least at this early stage.
I tend to be more loyal to my drawings. Honey badger don't care.
The process of Riva's drawing class disassembled my assumptions and approach to drawing, then painfully tried to help me reassemble basic skills. I cartooned it (admittedly somewhat unfairly, in a moment of frustration) like this...
But in reality, the impact of thinking about drawing in this new way, from the inside out, has carried over to drawing just about anything. I was sketching a coat and found myself thinking about its internal structure, how it supports what is seen on the outside. The drawing actually ended up having some depth. Huh. Who knew?
Interestingly the butcher paper from class sessions is organized in order below, and perfectly reflects the process of this class for me. At first, I'm all cocky & confident, and I roll my (thought to be) masterpieces, tuck them under my arm & trot home. The middle was a different story - folded my work, jammed it into my bag, slunk home. There may have been some crumpled on site that didn't even make it home. But then it comes together again, and I did drawings it doesn't pain me to revisit & I rolled them again.
Learning is hard. Teaching effectively is even harder, and I thank Riva for her patience & skill. I have much more to learn, and much, more drawing to do. There's a saying that feels like a lame cliche, "When the student is ready the teacher will appear" or something. I guess it might be true. Dorky, but true.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Monday, January 09, 2012
Sketch of the Week 1
Unfinished, but I suspect most of them will be...
DaVinci wrote, "Art is never finished, only abandoned."
Sunday, January 01, 2012
Draw Every Day 2012
Today is the day to decide if there's one thing you want to try to do every day for a year. Here's what I'll try, to follow the wise advice of the amazing illustrator Katie Green. For 2012 I will
At the end of a week, I'll try to post the best of that week, assuming there is a best. My methodology may vary - sometimes on iPad, sometimes following the words of Annette Goodheart, as quoted by Roger Ebert,
At the end of a week, I'll try to post the best of that week, assuming there is a best. My methodology may vary - sometimes on iPad, sometimes following the words of Annette Goodheart, as quoted by Roger Ebert,
"Begin with a proper sketch book. Draw in ink. Finish each drawing you begin, and keep every drawing you finish. No erasing, no ripping out a page, no covering a page with angry scribbles. What you draw is an invaluable and unique representation of how you saw at that moment in that place according to your abilities. That's all we want. We already know what a dog really looks like."
Monday, December 26, 2011
It's Year-in-Review Time!
Best-of lists started posting before Christmas, but to my mind, one doesn't review a year until it's nearly over. The time between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve is that week for me. I know some Comic Nurse fans like to also enjoy my annual tradition, so here are this year's questions.
The
most enjoyable meals of the past year:
The
books I enjoyed most:
The
music I enjoyed:
The
movies I enjoyed:
The
TV shows I enjoyed:
Best
live performances I attended:
New
friends I made this past year:
Disappointments
I experienced:
The
nicest thing done for me this past year:
The
nicest thing I did for others this past year:
Other
stuff about this past year that I don’t want to forget:
My
person of the year for the year ending is:
For
the coming year, these are my personal goals:
The most enjoyable moments of the past year were:
The least enjoyable moments of the past year were:
The
most enjoyable meals of the past year:
The
books I enjoyed most:
The
music I enjoyed:
The
movies I enjoyed:
The
TV shows I enjoyed:
Favorite radio of the past year:
Best
live performances I attended:
New
friends I made this past year:
Most memorable quotes:
Discoveries/things I learned this past year:
Goals I reached/my accomplishments:
Disappointments
I experienced:
The
nicest thing done for me this past year:
The
nicest thing I did for others this past year:
Other
stuff about this past year that I don’t want to forget:
My
person of the year for the year ending is:
For
the coming year, these are my personal goals:
These are my professional goals:
Household goals for the coming year:
For the coming year, these are my predictions:
Monday, December 19, 2011
Graphic Medicine Blog AND Podcast!
I'm very pleased to report that there is now a Graphic Medicine blog here and a Graphic Medicine podcast available in the iTunes store. Search the store under "Graphic Medicine" to subscribe or you can access our feed directly here.
Currently the podcast is presenting talks from the November Graphic Medicine forum in Leeds. After those are posted, episodes will consist of interviews and conversations defining and introducing the Graphic Medicine movement.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Comics & Medicine 2012 Announcement and CFP
Comics &
Medicine: Navigating the Margins
22-24 July 2012
Toronto, Canada
Faculty
of Medicine, University of Toronto
Biomedical
Communications Program, University of Toronto
Office
of the Vice-Principal, Research, University of Toronto Mississauga
The third international interdisciplinary conference* on
comics and medicine will continue to explore the intersection of sequential
visual arts and medicine. This
year we will highlight perspectives that are often under-represented in graphic
narratives, such as depictions of the Outsider or Other in the context of
issues such as barriers to healthcare, the stigma of mental illness and
disability, and the silent burden of caretaking.
The conference will feature keynote presentations by
comics creators Joyce Brabner and Joyce Farmer. Brabner, a comics artist and
social activist, collaborated with her late husband Harvey Pekar on the graphic
novel Our Cancer Year (1994), which
won a Harvey Award for best graphic novel. Farmer is a veteran of the
underground comics scene who nursed her elderly parents through dementia and
decline as shown in her graphic memoir Special
Exits (2010), which won the National Cartoonists Society award for graphic
novels.
We invite proposals for scholarly papers (20 minutes) or panel
discussions (60 minutes) focusing on medicine and comics in any form (e.g.,
graphic novels, comic strips, graphic pathographies, manga, and/or web comics).
In particular, we seek presentations on the following—and related—topics:
·
Graphic pathographies of illness and disability
·
The use of comics in medical education
·
The use of comics in patient care
·
Depictions of the illness experience from the
perspective of loved ones and family caregivers
·
The interface of graphic medicine and other
visual arts in popular culture
·
Ethical implications of using comics to educate
the public
·
Ethical implications of patient representation
in comics by healthcare providers
·
Trends in international use of comics in
healthcare settings
·
The role of comics in provider/patient communication
·
Comics as virtual support groups for patients
and caregivers
·
The use of comics in bioethics discussions and
education
We also welcome workshops (120 minutes) by creators of
comics on the process, rationale, methods, and general theories behind the use
of comics to explore medical themes. These are intended to be “hands-on”
interactive workshops for participants who wish to obtain particular skills
with regard to the creation or teaching about comics in the medical context.
We envision this gathering as a collaboration among
humanities scholars, comics scholars, comics creators, healthcare
professionals, and comics enthusiasts.
300-word proposals should be submitted by Friday, 28
February 2012 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org.
Proposals may be in Word, PDF, or RTF formats with the
following information in this order:
·
author(s)
·
affiliation
·
email address
·
title of abstract
·
body of abstract
Please identify your presentation preference:
·
oral presentation
·
panel discussion
·
workshop
While we cannot guarantee that presenters will receive their
first choice of presentation format, we will attempt to honor people’s
preferences, and we will acknowledge the receipt of all proposals submitted. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed by an
interdisciplinary selection committee. Notification of acceptance or rejection
will be completed by 14 March 2012.
Please note: Presenters are responsible for session expenses (e.g. handouts)
and personal expenses (travel, hotel, and meeting registration fees). All presenters must register for at
least the day on which they are scheduled to present.
*Information
about the 2010 conference, “Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic
Novels,” in London, England, and the 2011 conference, “Comics and Medicine: The
Sequential Art of Illness,” in Chicago, Illinois, USA, can be found at
www.graphicmedicine.org.
Tuesday, December 06, 2011
In The Wild
Courtesy of Ian Williams, photo of my books on sale at the Wellcome Trust Blackwell bookstore. Honored to be surrounded by amazing graphic medicine texts by super cool women - especially Sarah Leavitt (Tangles) Nicola Streeten (Billy, Me & You) and Phillipa Perry (Couch Fiction).
Thursday, December 01, 2011
World AIDS Day
I just watched the end of Angels in America again, written by Tony Kushner in 1993. The main character, Pryor Walter, and his friends are standing at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. He says, "This disease will be the end of many of us but not nearly all. And the dead will be commemorated and we'll struggle on with the living and we are not going away. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come."
Sunday, November 27, 2011
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