Anthony Baker, certified medical Illustrator (CMI) with The Ohio State University’s Health Sciences Library Medical Visuals team, led students through a step-by-step process for drawing a human brain. Organs such as brains are complex structures and can be daunting to draw. However, by breaking it down into a series of simple lines and shapes, even those with previously untapped drawing skills can draw a fairly accurate brain.

The Draw-a-Brain workshop, which took place in Ohio State’s Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Center (IHSC) on October 21, 2024, had 32 attendees. Participants were provided with all materials needed for creating their own brain illustrations. This workshop was one in a series of monthly workshops put on by Ohio State’s Humanism & the Arts in Medicine program.

Humanism & the Arts in Medicine is an Ohio State-based program with the goal of creating a more humanistic environment to care for patients, educate students and residents and pursue meaningful research. It does this through providing arts programming to the seven health science colleges and the Wexner Medical Center community, and programming includes:

• A 40-piece orchestra of students from all seven of the Health Sciences at Ohio State
• An “Art of Analysis” Program at the Columbus Museum of Art
• The Annual Health Sciences Art Show 
• Creativity Workshops to help students develop their own arts — painting, drawing, ceramics and culinary arts
• On-campus performances from Opera Columbus, Ballet Met and Thurber Theatre Troupe
• A student-led literary magazine called The Ether Arts

More information about Ohio State’s Humanism & the Arts in Medicine program can be found on its website.

Last year, as part of the same workshop series, Anthony also led students through a Draw-a-Heart workshop. This year, students were polled in advance to choose from among three organs that they wanted to draw, and brain was the winner.

When surveyed after the event, the students provided some important comments. Overall, the students felt that the exercise helped provide a more creative and “chill” way to engage with anatomy. And it provided time to reconnect with art outside of studies, as well as hang out with classmates. One student wrote, “It provides a creative outlet away from my academic obligations and creates an opportunity to interact with my classmates in a more relaxed setting.” “Anthony Baker was awesome! I enjoyed learning a new way to experience and have a different perspective in how to view anatomy,” wrote another.

Plans are being developed to collaborate with the OSU Department of Anatomy and Humanism & the Arts in Medicine to offer similar drawing exercises to other student groups. 

Baker loves to share drawing fundamentals with the Ohio State Health Sciences community. “Drawing, like writing, is a fundamental way that we humans capture, process and record important information. Drawing helps us to see. And seeing can help us to understand. Drawing a biological structure improves our understanding of that structure. These exercises are designed to be simple and easy, providing an opportunity for the participant to see a structure as a series of lines, angles, shapes and alignments,” says Baker.

If you are interested in learning more about these drawing exercises, feel free to email Anthony Baker.