Xara and the International Year of Light

About two years ago I used Xara P&GD9 to draw a digital portrait of Wilhelm Roentgen, the founder of my profession of Radiology. This was just a practice sketch to learn how to use Xara with my Wacom Pen&Touch tablet because I was self-illustrating a book. The Roentgen portrait did not make it into the book, so I tried to give it away to the radiology journals. Some of the editors liked it so much that they requested that I write an article about how and why I did this. This led to publication of two illustrated articles. The United Nations (UNESCO) International Year of Light 2015 organization read my articles about how I connect radiology, quantum physics, and art and they invited me to contribute to their amazing web site, devoted to the application of light technology in science, industry, medicine, and education. My blog post on the International Year of Light web site is now active and it looks fantastic with three examples of my original artwork. Here are the links to the International Year of Light 2015 organization, my IYL blog post about Radiology, my articles, and my book. This throw away Xara sketch has done wonders for my academic career!
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International Year of Light web site, click on the IYL Blog tab:
http://www.light2015.org/Home.html

Direct link to the IYL Blog post:
http://light2015blog.org/2015/08/27/...tistic-vision/


Links to my illustrated articles:

The Artistic Eye and the Radiologist, Mark Hom, American Roentgen Ray Society, Senior Radiologists Section Notes, Fall 2014.
http://www.arrs.org/uploadedFiles/AR..._fall_2014.pdf

The Art and Science of Light: An Illustrated Retrospective, Mark Hom, Radiologic Technology, July/Aug 2015 86 (6), 702-708.
http://media.asrt.org/pdf/publications/702.full.pdf

Link to my book, coauthored with legendary cyclist Greg LeMond:
The Science of Fitness: Power, Performance, and Endurance, Greg LeMond and Mark Hom, Publisher: Elsevier/Academic Press, December 2014.
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Fitnes...d=1440086080&s

Congratulations, that's pretty cool! =D>

Yes, well done!

Good going! =D>

Congratulations WildRice.

Thanks Guys. It goes to show how far a sketch can go if you give people a free taste and self-promote yourself on the Internet. With all of web sites out there, I think the Internet is hungry for content, both words and images. If you have digital art that is really good, try to find an organization or company that can use it. They won't find your art by themselves. Here is another example. I used the same Xara scratch board technique to draw a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt and sent it to the Theodore Roosevelt Association. They own or have access to every image of him available, but they have used my portrait two years in a row now for their annual meeting. They and another historical society are non-profit so I did not charge them a fee, but they were very appreciative and I got some good souvenirs.
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I sent an email to the Xara Company as a "Xara success story" and got featured on the XaraGroup corporate Facebook site.

Excellent! Too shy to post the link?

As it says in the article, "Although often described as a fortuitous discovery, chance favors the prepared mind" - that is, the truth will out.