Medical Illustration Tribute - C5 Cervical Vertebra
Some projects aren't about a client brief or a deadline. They're about respect.
This personal project, begun in 2022, was my tribute to the classical medical illustrators whose work sits at one of the most demanding intersections imaginable, art and science. These were artists who dedicated their entire careers to rendering the human body with both anatomical precision and visual beauty. The kind of work that fills the pages of Grey's Anatomy, Netter's Atlas, and the great surgical textbooks. It deserves to be honored.
My goal was simple in concept, challenging in execution: create something that feels like it belongs in a 19th century anatomical atlas, but is built entirely with modern tools.
The subject is the C5 cervical vertebra ,the fifth bone of the cervical spine, sitting at a critical junction in the neck responsible for both structural support and nerve pathway routing. It's a beautifully complex form; compact yet intricate, with a geometry that rewards close study.
The series presents the C5 across three views, posterior superior with labels, superior with labels, and posterior superior with cross sections giving a thorough anatomical reading of the structure from multiple angles.
Every element was modelled and sculpted in ZBrush and rendered in Keyshot, with deliberate choices made at every stage to chase that aged, plate-illustration quality — the warm tones, the considered linework, the sense that this could have been pulled from a leather-bound volume.
It's a reminder that medical illustration is one of the most quietly remarkable disciplines in visual art, and that the tools may have changed, but the reverence for the subject doesn't have to.
