Elevating your ‘basic’ skills: The importance of continuing your art fundamentals training for medical illustration
Intro
Art fundamental training is so important to learn and maintain throughout your creative career however it’s something that can easily be forgotten as you progress through your professional life.
Art fundamental tutorials
Listen to our Podcast
Illustration tutorials
“ ESSENTIALLY ART FUNDAMENTALS ARE THE BUILDING BLOCKS OR FOUNDATION OF ANY PIECE OF ARTWORK. IT INCLUDES MANY ASPECTS OF CREATIVITY LIKE COLOR THEORY, COMPOSITION, LIGHTING AND VALUE, PERSPECTIVE, FORM, AND ANATOMY.
ART FUNDAMENTALS CAN MAKE OR BREAK YOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.”
Annie Campbell, medical illustrator and studio director knows this all too well, “Coming from a science background I didn’t realize how important art fundamental training was and also didn’t appreciate why we start with drawing primitive shapes before we advance on to more complex structures in our drawings.
I never quite connected the skills learned in the fundamentals of art with the more complex illustrations that I was tasked with creating and I think this led to really flat, lifeless illustrations. Even after I graduated from my medical illustration course, I forgot to keep up with my art fundamental training and the stress of being in my first job meant that these skills slowly fell to the wayside. Now, looking back, I’ve come to realise that I struggled and took a lot of time with more challenging assignments that required concepts that were a bit out of the box.”
Nowadays Annie and her co-director, Emily Holden, who is also a medical illustrator, finds themselves going back to art fundamental training as they focus on growing their creative team. “We want to make sure that all of our artists are able to produce top quality visualisations and that stems from knowing your art fundamentals. We’re trying to build an in-house training program to onboard our new hires so that everyone is working at the same level”, Emily shares.
Putting together a training program can be taxing. It’s definitely common to hear that most art schools don’t teach you everything you need to know about art fundamentals. Even though there is some truth to that, the schools still give you the right push towards learning more on your own. With that being said, the majority of their team are coming into the studio with varying skill levels so the two directors are conscientious of making sure that nothing is being left out. “We want to encourage people to push the boundaries of what they have been taught and find their own recognisable voice in their work” Emily explains, “But too often we heavily focus on all of the software we know and have this as a list of good core skills on our CVs, but what really matters is how we use these basic skills whilst considering all the other important art fundamentals.”
What are art fundamentals?
Essentially art fundamentals are the building blocks or foundation of any piece of artwork. It includes many aspects of creativity like color theory, composition, lighting and value, perspective, form, and anatomy.
Art fundamentals can make or break your illustrations. If you look at a piece of artwork and something seems a bit off or not quite right, a bad execution of art fundamentals is usually the culprit of an unsuccessful drawing. Art is one of those things that people judge very quickly and some people won’t quite know why but they just don’t like it. You may ask why and they may not be able to pinpoint the exact reason... there is just something that is throwing them off.
Being able to identify what goes wrong in an illustration is what separates professionals from beginners. This is a key point to why honing these skills are important as Emily explains, “On the other hand, a professional artist would be able to say if it's the form, or proportion, colors or lighting that is the root cause of this and they can provide constructive feedback, or if it is their own work - they can go fix it.”
Art fundamental examples in your medical illustration portfolios
When reviewing potential applicants to add to their team, Annie and Emily are constantly looking for signs of good art fundamentals. Annie dives more into the details of this; “There are a couple of things that really stand out to us when we look at people’s portfolios:
Number 1 is a good grasp of art fundamental basics. An understanding of light and form, observational drawing skills, composition, and color theory. The most beautifully rendered sphere is much more appealing to us than a badly constructed, complex illustration.
Number 2 is good figure drawing skills as it gives us an idea on whether you have good observational skills and are able to judge form and proportions correctly.
Number 3: The third thing we look for are unique pieces of work that require a heck of a lot of visual problem solving. It's really easy to do frontal and side anatomical poses in portfolios, there's so many references out there to help you visualize this. What's challenging is doing difficult orientations and figure poses AND STILL maintain enough clarity in your medical illustration to teach people something. This is spatial problem solving and takes a lot of time and dedication to learn this incredibly important skill for medical illustration.”
Another tip that the duo have for those looking to hone their portfolios are to avoid only using set course assignments in their portfolios; “If you’re competing with other graduates from the medical illustration schools for a job position, then it is very likely that the employer will have seen all of the same coursework before and they won’t necessarily be bowled over by the artwork” Emily explains before she adds a tip on how to overcome this, “Add a little bit extra and try and do something different with your coursework and present it in a unique way. This will helps you stand out from the crowd”.
Drawing the unseen - benefits of knowing your art fundamentals for medical illustration
Some people might be struggling in understanding why it’s important to be able to execute good art fundamental skills. Having been in that position herself and now in a more managerial role where both her and Emily are now mentoring artists on their team, Annie steps in to further expand on this, “When we see evidence that a person has some form of understanding of the fundamentals of art, we can tell that they would be able to problem solve any difficult creative challenges that might arise. Usually, in medical illustration, we need to draw the unseen or draw something from a different viewpoint. Putting this into a cohesive and informative graphic that teaches people something is a challenge, and that's why we're specialists.
But if you're just starting out, trying to create highly complex medical illustrations is going to be incredibly difficult without building good foundations in your art fundamental understanding.”
Tips on how to improve your art fundamentals
Thankfully there are a lot of free online tutorials to help you get acquainted with the basics of art fundamentals and you can use those as a stepping stone towards building a solid foundation of your skills. The key is to continue to grow those skills throughout your career and consistently go back to polish them if those practices fall to the wayside.
“The schools that we go to, to learn medical illustration, they give us the basic training of the fundamentals that we need for our work. It's up to us, the individual, to continue learning and build on those fundamentals, even after we graduate. And I think when people graduate, that's where they sometimes stop learning and they find it a struggle to get back on the learning bandwagon and you can kind of see the quality of their work plateauing. I know I did that when I left school,” Annie moves on to talk about the key to building your success, “this type of training, it's constant, there will always be another level to read up on. Color and lighting for example. First you learn about color theory (complimentary colors etc), once you've mastered that you step it up and learn about how light affects color: how warm or cold lights affect shadow color, and once you've done that, you step up another level and learn about how light and colors affect translucent materials, what subsurface scattering is, and so on and so forth. The list is never-ending”
