"Springtime, for Rachel, in Ames Iowaaaaa; winter, for students, with finals"

The title was a reference to "The Producers" in case you did not catch it. There are only two more weeks of school! Unfortunately, these include dead week which is not "dead" at all and finals. I hope you have had a good weekend.

My bad- It's Johns Hopkins. Here is a link to some examples of medical illustration.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/medart/Gallery.htm

Art, Art, Art

This past Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a free show at the Memorial Union after my two art studios. The visual performer, David Garabaldi,tours around the U.S. painting giant murals before large audiences, but this isn't like Bob Ross painting. He combines music and dancing to create portraits of influential people in less than 10 minutes. I wish I could create works of art that fast! For one, he painted Lady Gaga while playing a mix of her music, and for the Obama portrait, he mixed in his "Yes, we can" speech and some rock music. Other ones included Lil' Wayne and Albert Einstein. He never actually said who the people were at the beginning so it was always cool when the blobs finally become hair or a chin or something. He sells the paintings and the proceeds go towards a charity. It was refreshing to see someone create something beautiful with such freedom and passion. If he made a mistake, it didn't matter. The mistakes, the little splatters here and there, made them unique and simply highlighted the energy put into each piece. You should definitely check him out on youtube.

Today I attended a Photoshop workshop through BPMI club. David Cheney, a medical illustrator who graduated from ISU 5 years ago, got his masters from John Hopkin's and now works there as a medical illustrator. It was really cool to see his sample works at the undergrad., grad., and professional level. He talked about his experiences and showed us some new techniques for creating skin tones on Photoshop. At Jon Hopkin's, David does a variety of work, but he specializes in creating handouts for patients to help them understand medical concepts. He'll use his family members or friends to draw from, and then he'll scan them onto the computer and "paint" using Photoshop. A lot of biological/medical illustrators now want to keep parts of their drawings to show through the additions on Photoshop. It makes the pieces look a little more like unique pieces of work. His pieces are really beautiful and detailed. One of the examples used illustrations to explain retinal melanoma and every eyelash even had a highlight.

Although a lot of my time has been busy with studying biology, drawing, and work, earlier today I played soccer for the first time. Yes, that is right, soccer. It was really fun, and I like expanding my sport experiences. Next up, hockey? Oh, by the way, we won our last broomball game so we are now in the semi-finals. Whoo!