Microglia Illustration and Graphic

Microglia are tiny cells living in the brain and spinal cord, they crawl around looking for trouble and cleaning it up. At McGill University we studied microglia and made some time lapse movies to see how they move and how they acquire particles from the outside. In a recent manuscript we were asked to provide a graphic representation of the research, and after trying some things on photoshop I was not satisfied with the results so I made a watercolour painting. After scanning I combined the illustration with some photoshopped elements to create a final graphic. Below is a copy of the graphic draft, the final version has more text on it. This is not the first time my art has found its way into science. A brain-lesion being fixed illustration was included in a magazine on multiple sclerosis and a binary cell was included on the cover of a PhD thesis once at Karolinska institute. Watercolour 6 x 8 " cold press, 2017

Ten Percent Human (Turquoise)

We are only 10% human, the other 90% is bacterium living in the gut! I guess this painting is only 10 % human too, if that! A cat, an octopus, and creepy crawlies howling at the moon, the moon scowling back. Flowing organic lines bring the composition together, as does the theme colour turquoise. The turquoise appears throughout the picture in whole form, and broken down into its sum parts, blue, green and yellow. Complementary red and brown provide the colour balance.

I have often written that I am self taught but that is not exactly the case. William Clarke was perhaps the most influential teacher I had in high school art class he urged me to fill the sketch book full of drawings and has still followed my art to this day on social media. Around the same time Sue (Coleman?) was running watercolour classes where I learned about the medium. And Dini at artisans alley, an art dealer, she gave me quite a few useful pointers and encouraged me to pursue the doodleism style that began around 2001 until now.

15 x 22" cold press watercolour November 2016.

Victor: Pirajussara, Embu, Brazil

Here is the work done by Victor (Cilei's nephew) while in Brazil. He depicts the sky, the sun, and the kite that kids were playing with at the time. The red represents some red flowers that were growing in between the buildings and the green was the foliage. It was interesting to see the difference in what he saw as a child, and as a person who lives in a similar neighborhood near São Paulo. He seemed to have a lot of fun painting too!

5.5" x 6.5" cold press watercolour, 2017, by Victor

Pirajussara, Embu, Brazil

This painting was done on location in a neighborhood called Pirajussara, in a town called Embu, Brazil. The housing is built up along a narrow valley with sloping hills that goes for as far as the eye can see. Most of the buildings in this view are red brick and plaster with tin or slate tile roofs. Instead of trying to portray the detail in this painting I went with a more abstract approach. In the last painting I posted from this trip it was much more detailed, but lacked a bit of the feeling of the scene. Cilei's nephew Victor was also painting the same scene with me, and I noticed that his work portrayed the sky, the sun, and the children playing with kites in the neighborhood, rather than focusing on the dense buildings. I plan do do  larger version of the scene, incorporating some of the thoughts and feelings that I noted when doing this work on location, to capture the "ethos".

8 x 10" cold press, Watercolour, January 2017