True to Form

Course takes studio artists into anatomy lab to deepen their understanding of the human form

BY ANDREW VOWLES

The students donning white lab coats on the second floor of the Powell Building might be preparing for a human anatomy lab. But look again. The only tools the students are grasping are drawing pencils, not scalpels.

Sharpening the eyes of future artists and art teachers is part of the purpose of “Anatomy for Artists,” a new science elective for U of G fine art students that was offered this winter by the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences (HHNS).

Twice a week, the 20 students in this inaugural class left behind their accustomed studios in Zavitz Hall to visit U of G's human anatomy lab. There they learned the rudiments of anatomy and anatomical drawing through a weekly lecture and lab session delivered by Prof. Alison Webb, HHNS, and a weekly drawing class led by Prof. Jean Maddison, School of Fine Art and Music (SOFAM).

By providing a close-up look at the bones, muscles and organs beneath the surface of bodies normally used only by the 200 or so students in U of G's long-standing human anatomy course, both co-instructors hope to help fledgling artists hone their analytical and observational skills, deepen their understanding of the human form and perhaps provide a grounding for careers in scientific or medical illustration.

“Anatomy for Artists” is offered as a second-year human kinetics course for studio art majors. Webb says many of the same principles underpin the twice-weekly artist sessions and the more customary anatomy labs also offered here by her department. (That year-long human anatomy course — taken largely by human kinetics and biomedical sciences students — is the only such course affording whole-body dissections at a Canadian university without a medical school.)

“The need to look absolutely precisely is one of the fundamentals of anatomy anyway,” says Webb, a seasoned anatomist and research scientist who spent decades in England before arriving in Guelph two years ago as a visiting professor. “Anatomy requires the ability to see in detail how things are put together. They don't work if they're not put together correctly.”

So, like their B.Sc. counterparts, the artists are assessed through written and practical anatomy tests. But they're also graded on their pencil renderings of the skeleton, torso, limbs, muscles and skull — with a premium on anatomical accuracy and attention to detail.

That last point is admittedly a bit of an eye-opener for some of these students accustomed to more freewheeling and even abstract expression, says Webb. Glancing at a pile of student assignments depicting the spine and rib cage, she says anatomical illustration is “more science than art.”

Fifth-year fine art student Monika Musial echoes that sentiment. Pointing out the myriad angles and planes in her “bare-bones” drawing, she says: “Here you have to be anatomically correct.”

Musial has already blended art and science by illustrating journal articles on flies and bees across campus for environmental biology professors Steve Marshall and Gard Otis. Combining her experience and a current biology minor, she has applied to the master's program in biomedical communications at the University of Toronto.

“My interest is medical illustration,” she says. “It's important to know how the body looks underneath the skin.”

For fifth-year studio art student Amanda Henry, an interest in illustrating the human body was sparked after her father had surgery, including insertion of titanium screws, to mend a shattered heel three years ago. Unlike most of her classmates, she had already practised anatomical drawing at home, using a complete if battered skeleton from the elementary school where her mother taught physical education.

As for drawing directly from a human cadaver, she likens her anatomy class assignments to her earlier U of G life drawing courses with nude models. “You teach yourself to become detached.”

Mike Pszczonak, a second-year fine art student and occasional portrait painter, allows that he was “a little nervous” initially about entering the anatomy lab. He figures that if he follows his plan to become an art teacher in turn, he'll be able to share his experiences in this course with his own students.

Both Maddison and Webb say their students showed little reluctance or squeamishness about the idea of working with real human bodies. (In fact, the course drew more applicants than they could accommodate this winter.) As with their counterparts in human anatomy, the artists treat their subjects with respect, says Webb.

They've also observed hygiene rules not normally imposed in many studio art classes. In the Powell Building lab, students cannot wear sandals and have to tie back long hair. Those lab coats are required attire, and students must don gloves before touching bodies or body parts.

Maddison hadn't known that Guelph offered a human anatomy lab, but she was intrigued by the benefits of this cross-campus partnership for studio art majors.

“I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to introduce students at Guelph to the realities of what's beneath the body's shapes.”

She says her teaching and studio interests in medical and biological images made her a natural candidate to help lead this particular course. The longtime printmaker and computer graphics instructor has used her art to explore cloning and biotechnology. One of her digital prints appeared this month in an exhibition called “Body/The Body Question” at the Southern Graphics Print Council Conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She gave a talk on “Altering the Genetic Template: The Question of Inintended Consequences” and “The Body Imprint.”

Before coming to U of G nine years ago, Maddison taught life drawing and painting for art students in a health sciences anatomy lab at McMaster University.

“They had so much more intimate knowledge of what they were looking at,” she says. “Life drawing is training one's eye to see what's actually there.”

Webb is co-instructor of the human anatomy course with Prof. Lorraine Jadeski. Formerly a behavioural electrophysiologist with the Medical Research Council in England, Webb later pursued research and anatomy teaching at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne's medical school. An amateur acrylic painter, she uses her own line drawings of body parts to help teach her anatomy students.

“If you want to draw anything concerned with the human figure, anatomy tells you what you're looking at,” she says. “When you do this kind of drawing, you really need to look.”