Recreating a Master Biomedical Drawing by Russell Drake

Here is the master drawing I was given to recreate:

The first step in this process was to research the anatomy and the universal color used in medical illustration to recreate it. Once I had all of the information I needed, I created a line drawing in Procreate with some light values put in to get an understanding of the form.

I then added in flat colors as a base for the digital painting (kind of like an underpainting for an oil painting). Throughout this process you will see a lot fo swatches on the empty space of the canvas I was working on. I wanted to establish some simple color palettes to make the coloring process easier instead of trying to make up the colors as I went.

I pulled some reference photos of other medical illustrations to create these palettes. Below are some examples of the references I used:

I would begin painting each section by using the color palette to lay in some colors using the standard paint brush in Procreate.

I would then use the smudge tool to blend the colors together. One of my favorite brushes in Procreate is the Bamboo Chalk brush found under Sketching. When using this for blending it sprays the color so that the transition isn't too smooth and gives it some texture.

I found that throughout this process I was reworking areas as I completed more of the painting. The further I got, I noticed that I had a lot of medium and light tones, but not enough of the darker side of the spectrum. So I began to add in some more darker darks to push the depth forward. Here are some more process photos:

One of the final steps in creating this painting was adding the reflections in the metal medical instruments. I wanted to reflect some of the other colors in the metal as they would in real life. To do this I created another layer and, for example, took some of the pink and with a lower opacity painted it onto the metal. I then used the smudge tool with the Bamboo Chalk brush to blend it out lightly. I then played with some of the layer settings, using overlay and multiply to get the realistic look I wanted with the reflections.

Here is the finished piece: