Illustrating orthopedic surgical techniques

Over the years, Joanne has illustrated more than 65 orthopedic surgical technique articles—adding up to over 300 published illustrations in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery alone.

It’s not often that we get into the operating room to observe surgery directly anymore, which is disappointing because, well, can you think of anything more awesome than observing surgery live?! (We can’t!) But the upside is that the internet allows us the freedom to work seamlessly with clients around the globe… and we do! We’ve had the pleasure of creating surgical technique illustrations for surgeons in countries such as Austria, The Netherlands, Slovenia, Japan, Taiwan, Portugal, New Zealand, the UK,… and, of course, back here in the USA.

Most of the orthopedic techniques have been illustrated in grayscale. Early on, we still fired up the compressor and worked to the buzz of the Pasche AB airbrush spraying its watercolor paint either freehand or through carefully created masks. Labels and spot colors have always been added digitally, but these days a hand-drawn sketch is then taken to completion entirely digitally… no more need to worry about those dastardly airbrush splatters! (But I do miss that whirring…)

Here are just a few examples of figures from the past: