{ Getting Schooled } ~ Sex and the Courts

Illustration I did some years back dealing with HIV, Sexual Rights and the Courts which served as an exercise for my students on digital software techniques and a surrealistic conceptual approach to illustration.  

The original illustration was for CMAJ and focused on a recent series of court cases dealing with individuals who had HIV and had knowingly transmitted the disease to other partners without their consent.

The standard symbol of the Courts, the gavel and hammer, was given a surrealist 'twist': I took the comic book emanating lines used to represent  'noise'  visually but modified them by transforming them into sperm.  

The illustration was done digitally; I created the 3D forms in Adobe Illustrator; then mapped them with a photograph I took of some Santa Fe furniture in the studio. The individual forms were brought into Adobe Photoshop and assembled and tweaked using the Dodge and Burn Tool.  I had been looking for an opportunity to use the digital software as a supplement to most the traditional art that I do, and this seemed a great opportunity.