How I fused passions for art and medicine into a medical illustration career

Hillary Wilson has always had a deep appreciation for art and medicine. As a child growing up in the northeastern United States, she attended art shows and visited museums with her family and enjoyed watching her mother working as a primary-care physician. During her undergraduate biology degree at High Point University in North Carolina, her path towards medical illustration began to take shape. In 2018, she earned a master’s degree in medical and biological illustration at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, a programme that was established in 1959. She now works as a freelance illustrator, specializing in creating patient education materials using digital and physical drawing tools. She depicts diverse groups of people, aiming to address racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Nature spoke to Wilson about how she found this career path, and why medicine and medical research need a more diverse pool of illustrators.

What inspired you to pursue a master’s degree in medical illustration?

Art has always been a big part of my life and how I express myself as a person. When I was growing up, I was always doodling and sketching movie and television characters, such as the dog Balto from the 1995 animated film. But I also grew up inspired by my mother working as a primary-care physician. I studied the pre-medicine track of biology at university. But in my last year, I realized that something didn’t feel quite right about not having art as part of my science career. My uncle suggested that I consider medical illustration. Many people don’t know this career path exists, but he knew someone who had already gone into it. When I looked up the course, I really loved it. I started taking courses in art, figure drawing and basic anatomy to meet the requirements for getting into a medical-illustration programme. I built my portfolio with figure drawings, general and still-life drawings and graphic design. In 2016, I was accepted into the programme at Johns Hopkins.

What does the medical-illustration programme look like?

It was an intense 18-month programme. In my first year, I took a wide range of courses in visual communication, including anatomical and biological illustration, 3D modelling and animation, medical photography and graphic design. I also did advanced science courses, such as human and developmental anatomy. In the second year, I studied surgical illustration. We spent a lot of time learning how to create illustrations for medical procedures and surgeries. We would don our scrubs and go into the operating room to observe various medical procedures, including autopsies, conducted by physicians and surgeons. We would then make a series of surgical drawings that we presented in class and at the hospital. The drawings were critiqued and graded by surgeons and faculty members.

Why science needs a protein emoji

For my thesis project, I designed and created about 24 full-colour, poster-size illustrations as a visual resource for educating people undergoing gender-affirming surgeries. I focused on pelvic and facial surgeries for transfeminine individuals. Surgeons show interactive versions of these illustrations on their office computers to their patients. This is important in providing patients with reliable, easy-to-understand information about the surgery procedures, to help in their decision-making process and care. It was a once-in-a-lifetime learning opportunity that I wouldn’t have traded for anything.

You focus on patient education and racial and health disparities in medical illustration. Why is diversity important to your work?

First of all, it’s very important to have diverse portrayals of people in scientific and medical illustrations, because it’s reflective of the reality of our population. It is also important to have diverse group of medical illustrators, a pool that includes people from different backgrounds and experiences. These histories matter and shape the types of drawing we create and stories we tell.

As a Black American woman, different things occur to me when I’m tasked with visual storytelling. For example, I think a lot about how to portray diseases such as dermatological infections on people of colour. I always include enough details and the most relevant information when I’m making those types of drawing.

Broaden your scientific audience with video animation

It’s a two-way street: we need a more diverse pool of medical illustrators, and we need more diversity in the medical illustrations we create. That’s how we can craft the most rich, effective medical drawings that would be representative of — and beneficial to — everyone.

What do you like the most about medical illustration?

I am constantly learning. You have to do a lot of research and stay up to date with what’s going on in science, and have a very good understanding of things to make effective illustrations. In a recent project, I depicted dermatological conditions on Black skin for a general audience. I read a lot of studies that looked at the skin on a microscopic level, to be able to paint an effective visual picture of the condition. I get really excited when I take information that I have learnt and use it to develop compelling illustrations for public use.

What do you find surprising about this career?

Growing up, I had thought that the only way to pursue a career in art was to work as a painter in a studio. I didn’t realize that many different applications of art existed. Medical illustrators work in places such as animation studios, university neuroscience departments, textbook publishers and medical and health publications. There are lots of opportunities to explore. It gives me great joy that I found a career path that enables me to merge my love of art and medicine.