Hello William and Peter,

Peter, thank you for mentioning me to William.
NOTE: I don't recall having received an email notification about this. I saw this inquiry by William Poynter only today (a month since he posted it).

William, I am a professional medical illustrator with 44 year of experience. You can click on my profile photo to view my profile info. There, you can click on the "gallery" button to view 3 pages of examples of my work. You can view each image larger by clicking on it. To return to the smaller image sizes, scroll back up to the top of the page and click the "gallery" button.

There is also a link (to behance-dot-net) to my fuller online portfolio of my illustrations.
NOTE: On the Behance site, in addition to my medical illustrations, you'll see a section, "Non-medical illustrations."
That might also be of interest to you, as regards illustrations for a book whose audience is ages ±6-12.

Regarding your "2) are there software applications that might enable me to create such illustrations myself (i.e., applications specifically designed to create illustrations of microbiology content?)" — I'm not aware of any such software applications.

Regarding ". . . illustrations for a book dealing with the anatomy and function of the human eye, designed primarily for children (~ age 6-12)" — I can appreciate that for this age group, you would not want illustrations that are "styled" for medical students or medical professionals.

To wit, I am presently working on illustrations for the website of the Midwest Fetal Care Center (part of Children's Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis). These illustrations are for parents to see depictions of their child's congenital condition, and how the various conditions are (in most cases) surgically corrected, either pre- or post-birth. In creating these illustrations, I constantly keep in mind that these parents are already under emotional stress due to their child's condition; they don't need to view depictions of the condition that look like O.R. photos — with all the bloody realism. So, I try to keep the depictions "tamed down" graphically, while still being accurate.

According the my notification settings here on The Research Cooperative, I should receive an email notification if you reply to this message. But, if I don't reply to you within a day or two, it would mean that I didn't receive or didn't see an email notification from The Research Cooperative. In such a case, it would probably be a good idea for you to send me an email notification yourself.

Regards,
David R. Purnell > skyotter@aol.com
(in Minnesota)

--
David R. Purnell, MA, AMI
Owner, NEW YORK WEST Medical Illustration Studio
skyotter@aol.com
updated by @david-r-purnell-ma-ami: 23/05/18 05:37:53AM

Dear William,

A key person in our network for advice on this would be David Purnell. I will try to call his attention to this using the @username device:

@David R. Purnell, MA, AMI  

Thanks

--
Peter J. Matthews, Chief Admin.,
The Research Cooperative,
Auckland & Kyoto.

Contact: researchcooperative [at] gmail [dot] com

this is my first post on the Research Cooperative site, so forgive me if I am not aware of proper protocol.

I am interested in learning more about creating illustrations for a book dealing with the anatomy and function of the human eye, designed primarily for children (~ age 6-12).  I have a few questions that I hope some of you might be willing to comment on.

1) is there a community of illustrators out there that I can engage with to determine interest in such a project?

2) are there software applications that might enable me to create such illustrations myself (i.e., applications specifically designed to create illustrations of microbiology content?)