Happy Halloween from medimagery.com medical illustration! Halloween Skeleton Eating Candy
As a medical illustrator, studying the work of other artists is an important part of my free time, I would like to offer some perspective and, for what it is worth, an admittedly subjective but well-researched chronology for those interested in the best medical illustrators in history, and in different regions arund the world. I realize there are going to be enormous gaps. Please feel free to write to me and to comment below, and to add your favorites so my perspective can be the most well-rounded possible.
When actress, author & screenwriter Diane Sherry Case saw the an Instagram feed of the little animations I enjoy making with my kids, she saw potential for a collaboration between our creative energies and reached out to me. Likewise, I found pleasure in Diane’s sweet irony in lines. The playful characters appeared to me as if they had plans of their own.
The Kaballah Creation Story is so beautiful and simple. It explains so many of the feelings daily life brings; the longing for interconnectedness and the faith that each encounter one experiences contains a unique spark of divine perfection. I created this extremely simple sketch to capture some of the magical feeling this story brings.
Hailed the "co-founder of entomology" Maria Sibylla Merian is renowned because of her skills at close direct observation, accurate documentation, insights about insect life cycles, and her ability to transport her viewers to this world
Leonardo dissected more than 30 diseased and healthy human corpses during his lifetime, as a means of discovering human anatomy. Philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were curious about the body. But they did not dissect it in order to create a realistic model for reference. Consequently, Da Vinci's renderings are remarkably accurate.
Laura Maaske – Medimagery LLC has 20 years of experience making medicine beautiful and understandable. I’ve always loved expressing complicated concepts and seeking the beauty of natural forms.
Some Very Basic Lessons on How to Draw a High Quality Medical illustration
For students who simply want advice on how to improve the clarity of their scientific or medical illustrations, this video is a good basic resource. It’s a set of practices you might learn in the first week of a medical illustration program, for good practice:
Illustrated Stages of atherosclerotic Plague Development. Atherosclerosis is a vascular destructive condition of the blood vessel so that the wall of an artery holds an accumulation of a cholesterol-based materials. “Arthero” refers to the artery. “-sclerosis” means hardening or loss of elasticity of a blood vessel. This is a digital illustration created as part of a traditional flipbook. It has been purchased and copyrighted by Merck Pharmaceutical, 2000. Medical illustration prepared by Laura Maaske – Medimagery LLC. Below is an explanation of the atherosclerotic progression.
My love of letters came to me much later in life, as I've expressed in other posts. As a toddler, when I first saw the Roman Alphabet, I did not think the letters were beautiful. I played with a Fisher Price chalkboard and set of magnetic letters, Helvetica style. The thick straight lines, unbalanced asymmetries struck me as ugly and lacking the magic of languages like Chinese. When I finally began to love the alphabet, it was because I was drawing so much and occasionally, in my search for beauty, even making up letters of my own. I learned from my personal explorations that letters have patterns and that there is a balance in letters between individualism and conformity. If letters are too dissimilar, they do not work together beautifully. And if letters are too similar, they are too easily confused with one another and their identities blur. I began to respect rules as a source of beauty and harmony, through my explorations with letters.
The Human Cell: Cell Illustration
If you shrunk your body three million times you would be surrounded by 30 trillion cells made up of DNA from your own body. But as most of these cells are red blood cells, there are only 5 trillion tissue cells. You would soon notice, via the electrical surges, a profoundly busy network in communication around you.
3 smooth muscle layers of the stomach, together are called the muscularis externa. They are made up of (1) Outer longitudinal layer; (2) Middle circular layer; (3) Inner oblique layer. Each has a different function.
The digestive system has two main functions: (1) Convert food into nutrients your body needs, and (2) Rid the body of waste; its organs designed to digest.
Surgical Liver Illustration Series of the Laparoscopic Left Lateral Liver Sectionectomy. I am illustrating for Dr. Shiva Jayaraman of St. Joseph's Health Center, Toronto. © 2105 Laura Maaske - Medimagery LLC
This is a medical illustration drawing of the human skeleton. The human skeleton has two major components: the axial skeleton and the appendicular skeleton. The axial skeleton creates the upright stature of the human body, transmitting weight to the other regions of the body. It includes the vertebral column, the rib cage and sternum, and the skull. The appendicular skeleton includes the pelvis, the arms, and the legs. Its function is to protect the organs and to support movement of the body.
Medical illustration, or biomedical visualization, is the practice of biomedical communication, specializing in visual representations of aspects of medicine and science. Common forms of expression include digital art, physical modeling, 2d animation, 3d animation and app development, among others. Biomedical illustrators are able to utilize their strong drawing skills together with their background biology, botany, zoology and other sciences. Medical illustrators draw a wide range of subjects from surgery to human and veterinary anatomy; animal life and plant life; chemical, molecular, and atomic structuress, and geologic and planetary formations.
Acne vulgaris, simply known asacne, is a progressive skin disease in which the sebaceous glands of hair follicles are clogged with oil from the skin (sebum) and dead skin cells. It is diagnosed with the appearance of characteristic whiteheads, seborrhea (increased oil-sebum secretion), blackheads, pimples, oily skin, and occasional scarring of the skin on the cheek, forehead, chin, and back. These are the places on the body with the densest population of sebaceous follicles.
Acne affects almost 80 percent of teenagers and young adults. The onset of acne depends to some extent on testosterone and androgens which begin to circulate in the body at this time, in both boys and girls. Acne is characterized by comedones (blackheads), papules (swellings without pus), pustules, nodules (gathering of swellings), or seborrhea (excessive sebum discharge). And it can cause hyper pigmentation or even scarring. Acne is increasingly considered to be an inflammatory disease at all the stages of its development. As such, it is clinically treated in a successful way through the use of anti-inflammatory agents at all stages of acne development.
The causes of acne are complicated, multi-factored, and not entirely understood in their full range of mechanisms, despite many years of research. Treatments, likewise, are not perfect. A good result from acne treatment is a reduction of 50% in the appearance of acne.
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The embryo illustrations and fetus illustrations in the video above reveal fetal development beginning at 6 weeks of gestational age and progressing through each week, with summary text, until the final 40th week of pregnancy. At each week vital information about development is offered, along with a comparatively sized vegetable or fruit, to mark the size of the growing baby.
The hippocampus is to your brain just as the keyboard is to the computer's hard drive. The hippocampus is not where your memories are stored. But you depend on it to store memories.
drew the surgical illustrations below to reveal a specific technique for a surgical resection procedure to remove a stomach tumor. The procedure is a Laparoscopic Intra-Gastric Resection for Submucosal Proximal Gastric Tumor. My illustrations reflect the particular surgical approach taken by Dr. Julie Hellet of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada, for whom I prepared the drawings. The description below is my own endeavor to explain the procedure based on conversations with Dr. Hallet. The procedure as depicted for Dr. Julie reflects the actual surgical case of a 59 year old patient with a tumor mass on the gastroesophageal junction (GEJ), which is defined as the point where the lower esophagus joins the top of the stomach. Particularly, the tumor was localized to the lesser curve of the stomach, below the GEJ. The patient did not have symptoms of a tumor. The tumor was found coincidentally by clinicians during during workup when the patient was first diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. A 5.3 cm tumor was discovered during ultrasonic and endoscopic exploration.
The Laparoscopic Distal Pancreatectomy is a surgical procedure performed to remove both solid and cystic tumors from the distal pancreas. Tumors of this type to this area of the pancreas usually affect middle-aged adult women. Surgeons aim to preserve as many of the critical splenic and pancreatic vessels as possible. Careful effort is made to preserve the surrounding tissues. This way, the blood supply to vital pancreatic tissues is not disturbed. The procedure is performed laparoscopically as this is less invasive than an open surgical technique, and offers a more cosmetic impact.
I created this surgical illustration series on the oophoropexy, or ovarian transposition. This is a surgery in which a woman's ovary is moved to a different part of her abdomen so that radiation can be safely performed. Later in her life, the surgeon may move the ovary back to its proper position, giving the woman a better chance to become pregnant.
A practical and simplified guide for submitting demonstrative evidence, such as a medical legal illustration, would be these simple 3 questions, as offered in the Gonzaga Law Review, March 1967: Does the illustration assist the jury in understanding the case? Does the illustration assist the witness in explaining the testimony? Is the illustration "substantially like" the thing sought to be illustrated?
The Chinese language builds like bamboo, held in lines by knots and short, strong segments. ?Learn to change trees to bamboo and bamboo to trees?, the author suggested.
The Aleph is the first stroke of the universe. Back before I stumbled upon a ?first stroke? of my own, I thought of the Aleph as a tree. It was like the solid base of a trunk: the source. This is not wrong. But then, I found a new way to see it. Drawing letters, playing with curves, might allow you to explore the strokes you like best and choose from among them. Certain strokes do hold more than others. which is what I learned painting these grasses ?a magical idea.
Here are just a few of the medical illustrations I've prepared for clients. Feel free to contact me with any questions about the illustrations or about pricing.
This is my favorite time of year, because of the frog chorus. I can walk out my back door and explore the ponds and woods with my daughters. The air is cool and full of new growth, and there isn't the heaviness of mosquito clouds that will be surrounding us in another month or two.
It's still cold here in the Midwest and not yet through our arctic winter, but with all the cold has come this beautiful array of icicles not yet melting. I have just learned that icicles are smooth if they are made from distilled water. And they are rippled if the water has minerals and salts. This rippling, in fact, occurs at the same wavelength, world over. Nobody claims to know why the wavelength is the same, or even how why the ripples form as a result of the impurities.
The Love of Turning Pages. It’s not a fair choice to have to make, between digital and printed books. And overall as readers, we are choosing both in different ways. But how? Both print and ebook sales are on the increase2. But the ebook rate accelerates faster because its market is newer.3 Traditional books are objects we know well: we use them and manipulate them intuitively. We can feel how much we’ve read through a book, using our fingertips, and without having to search for any number or dial on a screen. Books can last ages and they are printed in a way that lasts. They do not need to be charged at night in order to function. They may even endure some floods and high temperatures. Words form a path, a stream, and you follow that path straight and true from beginning to end. There is beauty, elegance, and simplicity in the design of a book.
Although I am an illustrator, I am still always looking for beautifully prepared animations and illustrations. This one is an evocative display of cell division. If you didn't already have a sense of the dramatic life of a cell, you will after watching this:
Recently I read that our digestive tract have more neurons than a domestic cat has in its whole brain. So when I read that microbes in our guts may be controlling the moods we experience in our brains, it came as not such a surprise. The particular strain of microbes in your gut may be responsible for emotional health as well as your physical health. They may determine your sense of fear or anxiety or relaxation and calm. Stephen Collins, McMaster University, Canada, was the first to make this connection, in his studies on rats. Research is being done on humans now, by UCLA's Center for Neurobiology of Stress, Emeran Mayer, M.D.
Louie Schwartzberg is an filming artist who captures patterns. Because I spend time in nature, photographing the patterns I see, I have loved his high and slow-motion time-lapse photography, and his vision. He says he learned to create it when he was young, patiently working for an entire month to make each four-minute film of flowers as they bloomed. A little bit more about his personal perspective: This recent focus on patterns has turned his work into a more philosophical direction and returned him to his first love of film-making. But Louie Schwartzberg’s award-winning career work reaches broadly. He’s worked on projects for films and television programs such as Crash, E.T., Men in Black, Sex and the City, The Bourne Ultimatum, Syriana, and American Beauty. He directed Disney’s America’s Heart and Soul.
Centralized Healthcare. Drawing Physicians to Rural America with the AHA. Written & illustrated by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator| e-Textbook Design This October 1st opened enrollment of the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), which is the most sweeping social change for Americans since the Social Security Act Roosevelt signed in in 1935. The AMA has praised this event as historic. And with the government taking a stronger control in healthcare, there will be a guiding hand.
When I looked at the heart for the first time I saw a circumferential basal loop. And then I saw a descending limb and an ascending limb. And they curl around each other at a helix and a vortex, except for the ventricle. And the angles at which they go is about 60 degrees. 60 degrees down and 60 degrees going up, and they cross each other in that way. For years people had wondered why this happened. I realized this is really a spiral. And I began to think about spirals. And I began to understand that spirals are almost the master plan of nature in terms of structure and in terms of rhythm.… if you pick the middle of the spiral up you form a helix. And of course the heart is a helix.
Was your medical training all you had hoped it to be? Did you learn as much as you expected or knew you could? Was learning effective, efficient, and fun? Technology is changing the practice of medicine. But it is also changing the way medical students learn, expectations of their potential, and the way they want to be learning.
his is a branding concept I offered to the new Milwaukee Food Truck Association. This may seem an unlikely project for a medical illustrator. But more and more I am finding that I value the simplicity of good design. I want to be pulling to the ideals there in as many ways as I can. And so, gladly, I offer my skills to this area when the opportunity arises.
Written and Published by medmonthly magazine on August 30, 2013 in Research & Technology http://medmonthly.com/research-technology/med-monthly-welcomes-laura-maaske-as-a-staff-illustrator-writer-and-journalist/#! This month Med Monthly welcomes Laura Maaske on board as a staff illustrator, writer and journalist. She will be supplying an article or illustration each month dealing with ground breaking health care advances and state-of-the-art medical images. She has been a regular contributor, with […]
They’re Here! An early September morning, apples ripe out my window. I was speaking with Dr. Albert Chi, a pioneering surgeon for advanced prostheti ...
Now, I will let go something.
I will allow mist.
Sometimes, explaining offers clarity,
and it works well.
Other times, it destroys
the delicate web of threads.
With over 17,000 health and medical apps available in iTunes, and with an average price at around $2.00, iTunes ?Health? and ?Medical? categories are two of the fastest growing sectors of app development. There are health games that offer, for example, quizzes to assess calorie content of various foods. There are GPS apps, order tracking apps, weight management apps, pedometers, diabetes regulating apps, and calorie counting apps, just to name a few. These apps might be associated with push notifications that offer users reminders to take meds or other health interactions.
In the neural firing of our eyes, there is a duality rather a trichromy in the interpretation of color. Ewald Hering described the opponent-process theory to explain this. Neurons that fire in response to a red object will, in their sudden absence, create the illusion of having seen green; and vice versa. Neurons that fire in response to blue will see yellow in the sudden absence of blue. Neurons that fire in response to black stimulus, in their sudden absence, perceive white. Opponent-process is also an emotions theory. Emotions come in pairs.
There is, specifically, magic in an image, maybe in any image if the viewer looks the right way.
It comes (for lack of my ability to express it more clearly) from the ability of the image to hold an entire thing close: a small universe with laws that work together, all at once to reveal a piece of truth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9jvVzkZiRs&feature=plcp
Watching the July 4 fireworks, there seemed a whole life revolving around the lone moon: not so circular and isolated after all.
Cataracts are generally defined as breakdown of the lens microarchitecture. Normally in vision, light passes through the lens of the eye so that the image can be projected clearly on the retina. This image is then interpreted as a neural signal. If the lens is unclear, which is a condition called a cataract, the image projected on the retina will be cloudy or blurred. With a cataract, some even, perhaps a DNA mutation, causes opacity of the crystalline lens. It may be there isa structure change accompanied by changs inin lens protein constituents. The opacity or cloudiness means that the refractive index of the lens varies significantly over distances approximating the wavelength of the transmitted light.
Primary experiences describe the general shape of not zooming into a fractal, but rather, zooming out of a fractal, with original experiences feeling more distant, yet ever layered into the wider and wider experiences which come.” –Christopher Vita If experience is like zooming out from a fractal, then perhaps any body of knowledge offers a similar gathering momentum. It begins at the limbs with the collection of small bits of information. Those bits gather into larger and more solid structure.
Creating a New Alphabet Drawn by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator| e-Textbook Designer This is a slide show of an alphabet I developed. For an explanation of its creation, go to this page. [slideshow_deploy id=’3388′] What are your ideas about the alphabet? Have you created one of your own? Please write […]
Written & Painted by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator| e-Textbook Designer Earliest Human Impulses to Create an Alphabet With the weather getting colder, I’ve been taking my daughters to parks a lot less. Recently, as an after-school activity, I talked with my daughters about the alphabet, how each character makes a […]
As a student medical illustrator, I knew what I wanted to learn. I wanted to wrap my mind around the science and the drawing skills I would require in the future. I already had an undergraduate degree in zoology, and our courses in the Division of Biomedical Communications were to be shared with the medical students at the University of Toronto, so science was heavily on my mind.
I have a childhood image of my dad
which carries through all the years.
He's standing at the patio door with his hands interlaced behind him
silently engaged with a tree (or it might be the moon).
Even when I was very young,
I kept at a distance, so as not to disturb the feeling he created there.
Our Feelings about Brands Written by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator I was five years old and I slid to the front seat of the car, looking up at the back-lit letters designating the drugstore into which my mom had stepped. I had spent a lot of time looking at letters: […]
Hirschsprung's Disease is a childhood gastrointestinal disorder which is often treated surgically. Surgical treatments do not always repair or correct the enterocolitis and debilitating constipation, but it does offer relief. The disease is named after Harold Hirschsprung, who was the first to describe th condition in 1886. The APHS, for whom I prepared these illustrations, no longer exists. So many distressed parents have written to me over the years, whose children have been diagnosed with this condition, and regarding this brochure, that I would like to provide the only resources I know for assistance and support for this condition:
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Power of Light as a force in Medical Illustration or any Illustration Written & Illustrated by Laura Maaske, MSc.BMC, Medical Illustrator & Medical Animator Do you recall your first discovery of light when you were a child? What an alluring beauty that intangible phantom presents for babies at a certain age. I remember […]
Anatomy of Wood Hardwoods like maple, as opposed to softwoods, naturally produce a wide array of incredible patterns and details, This complexity makes wood identification a difficult puzzle at times. Typically, the family of wood can be identified, but not always the species. Details are noted in a sequence most likely to simply the identification […]
“There’ll never be a door. You are inside and the fortress contains the universe and has no other side nor any back nor any outer wall nor secret core. Do not expect the rigor of your path, which stubbornly splits into another one, which stubbornly splits into another one, to have an end. . . […]
And yet relation appears, A small relation expanding like the shade Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill. -Wallace Stevens, “Connoisseur of Chaos” . What are your favorite fractals? For me, simply to list my favorite fractals together, knowing they all share something in […]
What are the Common Patterns in Nature
Yes, the question is abstract and obscure. But I may as well admit it. At root, what I want to know most is, “What does the body tell us about the universe?”, and vice versa.
Personal Reasons for Writing and Posting my Work Here
What can we learn about the design of the universe, as we look to the body for clues? My question finds me at a somewhat broken place where I have observed a great deal of disconnectedness. But recently I am beginning to observe in those same patterns, a common architecture. I wonder if this sense is real. I want to find design parallels using science, art, philosophy and all the truth traditions as tools. I want my professional life and my personal life to lead me down this path of exploration.