Pharynx and larynx

After a certain period of frustration, and some tedious and nerve-wracking work, I finally finished the second rendering (here rendering means adding tonal value to a line drawing or sketch) for the textbook illustration course. That parenthetical reminds me of "A Series of Unfortunate Events". "A word which here means that I put some text in parentheses."

The frustration was due to not knowing where and how to use the contour lines required for this medium, but after help from the professor, some trials and plenty of eraser (all the rendering is done in pencil first), I managed something that I'm actually quite pleased with. The nerve-wracking part was due to not being able to Ctrl+Z a shaky pen stroke. It is possible to erase the ink with a mechanical eraser (like a dentist drill) but not that easy and not many times. Luckily I didn't make any huge blunders, and I tweaked a couple things in photoshop after. Not perfect by any means, but it puts the pen and ink I did as one of my portfolio pieces to shame (I never posted it I hope). Yeah, for the portfolio piece, I don't think I did any pencil tests... anyway, best not to dwell on it. Onwards and upwards.

Then I did some labelling in Illustrator again. I cut back on the number of labels from the original labelled drawing. The major failing of this piece in my opinion is the lack of real focus. Is it supposed to be a figure of the pharynx, the oral cavity, the brain, the dural folds, the arteries of the brain? Anyway, it's not going to be used for didactic purposes, but it's still good to be mindful of what the piece is intended for and what kind of audience it has.

Any more news? Nothing major... back to Illustrator I suppose. I need to learn about opacity masks and stuff.

Later,
Stuart