As I mentioned earlier this week, I admire the way Phoebe Gloeckner depicts the human figure (particularly the female form). After doing some more research, I learned that she is also a medical illustrator. Have a look at these haunting, virtuosic images. (Notabene: these are anatomically explicit. You have been warned.) Read more about Gloeckner in this interview about cartooning on the PBS website, or straight from the horse's mouth in Diary of a Teenage Girl.
Snip from the interview, in which Gloeckner talks about how she teaches art students:
...the classes change from semester to semester, but no matter the topic, the basic principle underlying my "method" of teaching (developed in just two years) is that a properly prepared artist/creator must simply know everything. Not just how to draw, but how to see. Not just how to use a computer program, but what the word "penultimate" means. And the shape and orientation of a goat's pupil. And where Kentucky and Chile are, at least approximately. The only way to know everything is to learn how to think, how to ask questions, how to navigate the world. Students must learn how to teach themselves to use new tools, how to talk to unfamiliar people, and basically how to be brave.