NICU baby - 16-9-2020 - Brush

A commissioned drawing to illustrate a PhD about baby's experience of being in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The gloved hand at the top represents the staff, and the hand at the bottom represents the family.

My only dissatisfaction with this drawing is that I don’t feel the baby looks ‘newborn’ enough. Brand new babies are hard to draw because they are so formless: just squishy features in the middle of a big head. The eyes of this baby look somehow alert, which is not how most newborns look— though I have known some to gaze straightaway. I do feel, though, that the gaze in this drawing centres the baby’s experience, which meets the brief.

Unlike my daily drawings, I planned this one out with pencil first, to make sure all the medical equipment was correct. (My friend Anna, a paediatrician, commented “Accurate!”)