Featured Artist: Phoebe Gloeckner

My Background: Like most people, I'm sure, I started drawing as a child, and got serious about it in my teens, when I began writing and illustrating my own comic-book-style stories. By the time I was ready to go to college, I had decided to follow a course of study in medical illustration. The subject interested me, and I assumed I'd be able to make a living at it eventually. I did my undergraduate studies in fine art and pre-med at San Francisco State University, and I also studied a year abroad, in France. It took me five years to complete my undergraduate work because there were so many prerequisites for graduate school. I got my masters degree in medical illustration from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas. It was a very challenging two and a half years--- we were expected to draw as realistically as possible, and many hours were spent studying the effects of incident and reflected light on objects, as well as watching surgery, attending autopsies in the morgue, and doing our own dissections in anatomy classes. We had to write a two hundred page thesis and could not substitute it with an equivalent drawing project. At the time this seemed like an unfair and unreasonable requirement, but I finally thought up a topic that would at least allow me to look at a lot of artwork.The thesis was entitled, rather grandiosely, I think, "A Semiotic Analysis of Medical Illustration."

Throughout college and afterwards, I continued doing comics, getting stories published a few times a year in "alternative" and "underground" publications like "Weirdo," Wimmin's Comics," "Young Lust," and "Twisted
Sisters." Comics of this sort do not pay very well. About $25.00 a page, actually!

When I graduated I immediately moved back to San Francisco and started looking for work that I could support myself by doing. I showed my portfolio to a more established medical illustrator, Betsy Palay, at Artemis in Palo Alto, and she soon hired me to do a lot of work. It was a great learning experience. We worked together-- she'd do sketches, and I'd do final artwork, and vice-versa. I worked for her on and off for many years, and learned much about how a successful illustration studio is run.

Since then, I've been freelancing as a medical illustrator, working for pharmaceutical companies, medical organizations, and individual doctors.I draw and write comics whenever I can. I've also illustrated five children's books. This past summer, my first solo comic book was published. It's called "A Child's Life and Other Stories", and it's a trade paperback, 144 pages and published by Frog, Ltd., with an introduction by R. Crumb. I've just started work on a second book with the same publisher.

My Technique: For medical illustration, I used to work with an airbrush, but now I scan in sketches and color the artwork in Photoshop, using the airbrush tool and building digital "friskets" with the paths tool. I work on a Macintosh. My comics are all done with Higgins Black Magic Ink and Windsor-Newton series 7 brushes on Strathmore series 500 4-ply plate finish bristol. When I do comics in color, I scan in the ink drawings and create the color in Photoshop by duplicating the ink layer and setting the top layer on "multiply," and the bottom (color) layer on normal with "preserve transparency" selected.

When I use the computer I paint in Photoshop and Fractal Painter. I try to mimic my painting style as much as possible. I sometimes scan parts of a painting comp or drawing then finish the piece in the computer. I have been able to fool lots of people as to what tools I use to create my work. I think the tool, be it the computer, paint, or whatever, is secondary to the finished piece. All that matters is the quality and success of the image.

My Involvement in the Guild: I worked on the membership committee for about 6 months, sending out announcements and applications, and responding to phone inquiries. Circumstances didn't permit me to continue longer than six months, but I enjoyed the work and the contact it afforded with other Guild members and I'd gladly do it again when circumstances do permit.

All artwork © 2002 Phoebe Gloeckner. Not to be used without permission.