!deas Gallery Proposal - OSC

Here's a project proposal for the !dea Gallery at the Ontario Science Centre. The project was a collaboration between Jessy Chung and I. I felt really blessed to have had such an amazing partner to work with. We kept the design aspects consistent through constant communication and that really kept the project on its feet.
The in depth explanation of different elements is in there but basically, the exhibition was designed to explain to the public, what scientific illustration is. We tied together the themes, timelines, and subject matter with DNA. We felt that this would be appropriate because scientific illustration deals with the natural world and life sciences and DNA is common to all living things. Overall, we tried to make use of the many screens in the space and address the issue of interaction with viewers of different ages.

BEST: The best part of the project was definitely having someone to hash out ideas with and build on top of existing ideas to make them better.

WORST: I can't say there was anything that I didn't love about this project except for the timeline. We had to complete it in a pretty tight time frame considering that it was a group of two. That was a little bit stressful but it definitely made it an unforgettable learning experience.

Piscivore [old+new]

A reworking of an old project. You can compare the two just to see the different approaches I took. In the old version, I was basing a lot of the shapes on the swooping motions that each of the birds used in fishing. I also chose to show the full body of the birds in their water environments but stylized the water [which was an experimental approach] to draw together the organic birds with the geometric backdrop.
In the new version, I opted for a closeup view of each bird because I felt that a more detailed view of the actual fishing mechanism of each bird was more important than seeing their full body. Additionally, I went for a lighter palette so that the background did not overshadow the main content. Finally I cleaned up the sequential diagrams, turning them into vectors just for clarity's sake. There's a time to use pixels and then there's a time for clean, crisp, vectors. I actually learned a lot from making myself go through this exercise. I'm very pleased with the new version.

New

Old

Intrinsic Elements of the Hand

Some media explorations paired with hand sketches. This was exploratory on almost all fronts. I haven't tried anything like this before, aside from the first pencil sketches, so it was very fun. Backgrounds were made with tea, coffee, chalk pastel, and watercolour.

Best: Fiddling with textures digitally and physically.
Worst: Carpals. After pisiform I've got no landmarks.

+ one of our profs just shared this article. Here's a small exerpt:

"In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?" (retrieved from: http://positionrelative.wordpress.com/)

plankton: Siphonophore

The assignment: illustrate the structure, story, or setting of any plankton. Of course, I chose the thing with a million tentacles because what's the point of doing a simple illustration when you could just pull all your hair out? 8D
Meet the Portuguese Man O' War. It's a siphonophore and it is not a jellyfish!
Worst: Those crazy gastrozooids and gonozooids. Trying to find out which was which and how to differentiate/whether or not it's possible to tell from whatever distance was just terrible. Most closeup photos or videos of the siphonophore were unlabeled or only vaguely eluded to which parts were which. Mostly because, at this distance, the gastrozooids and gonozooids look the same. However, under closer microscopic observation they would look vastly different.
Best: After the line work was done, painting this thing was really fun. Also, solving the challenge of finding shortcuts for drawing a million zooids without it being obviously cheated/copy pasted was rewarding.

generic Plant Cell

Here's a plant cell illustration with images of what multiple cells look like and what the membrane structure is made of. Learn something new everyday =D

BEST: I've always loved biology textbook illustrations so it was cool to be on the other end of the information communication system.

WORST: I chose to work with a limited colour palette so differentiating all the different organelle, especially the ones that look similar [golgi, ERs] got really challenging. And overall getting little details correct.

Botanical

Traditional timee. Here are some botanical ink illustrations using different techniques.

nib

Stippling! That's right, 1/10th of the way in,
I already regretted using that 005 micron.

Brush. Shading perpendicular to the veins.

Brush. Shading following the light

Okay this one is actually done on Illustrator using the pen tool.
First time doing something like that with Illustrator.

Nature Journaling

Some nature journaling sketches. I gotta say, as a nature noob, pretty much everything looks interesting and new to me.


Woah, some of the colours are reproducing kinda psychedelic. Put on some sunglasses and look at them, it'll look more like the original =D

Bombardier Beetle

Hey guys!
I just finished my last assignment for the year. What a weird feeling, to not have anything due next week.

Anyway, the objective was to illustrate some sort of process or function of a bug. I chose something more internal because bombardier beetles are amazing on the inside.

Enjoy and for anyone who is having great weather [as we are], hope you're savouring it!

BIRDS [cont.]

So I forgot to upload these with the bird diagrams. Here are some sketches and rough research to accompany the hawk wing and ani topography. Fun stuff!


The hawks were drawn from two visiting hawks from the Peregrine Foundation. All the other birds are referenced from the ROM's stuffed collection.

BIRDS

Hey guys,
Here's a topographical study and wing study of a Smooth-billed Ani and Red-tailed Hawk [respectively].


W O R S T :
I think the biggest challenges for this project had to be those feathers. Dang birds got so many of them all over the place. How is anyone supposed to know where one part starts and one part ends?!

B E S T :

Most enjoyable part of this was definitely having the opportunity to get a close up look of a Red-tailed and a Harris hawk.

Enjoy!

Skull/Hindlimbs

Here are some finals for a skull study project and limbs [fore or hind] study project.

Yaaaaay.

My brain is so fried, I just cut myself with a pair of scissors =(

RWF

Hallo Folks!
We had a class trip to the Royal Winter fair last week and I managed to do some decent sketches between the jostling of people and obstinacy of animals. Some additional overlays and cleanup done afterwards.

These guys had a great time flicking sawdust on my sketches.

Proportional issues. Dang goat wouldn't stop moving.

This guy was very interested in the goat next door.

And some sketches of my dog that I did afterwards.

HINDLIMB [draft]

Hai! So here are some potentials for a hindlimb comparison study. Haven't quite settled on a colour scheme.

*Note: did you know, porcupines have clavicles?? At least the one in the ROM does, upon further investigation it seems most eastern hemisphere species are destitute of a clavicle.

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