Exploded Cell Phone

This is an exploded view of a cell phone that I completed for The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History for an upcoming exhibit entitled "The Natural History of the Cell Phone". I had initially begun the project with digital renderings, but Dr. Bell at the museum requested that I switch to watercolor to emphasize the often-overlooked handmade nature of high-tech objects.

 It was an unusual experience to sit down with something as modern as a cell phone and to approach it as though it was some sort of zoological or botanical specimen- from dissection to traditional representation of its parts. As I have no background in modern technology whatsoever, I felt a little bit naive in my approach, possibly as some of the early European scientific illustrators might have felt when drawing African animals for the first time.

These are the first in a series of cell phone portraits for the same exhibit illustrating various members of the cell phone family.

Here is a link to The Smithsonian's blog page about the exhibit:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2012/03/coming-soon-a-natural-history-of-the-cell-phone/