Lara Devgan Did It

Lara Devgan combines formal art training in painting, sculpture, and photography with surgical practice, producing hand-drawn anatomical sketches as part of preoperative planning. The sketches document facial and bodily features with precise pencil markings that identify asymmetries and age-related changes such as periorbital hollowing, submental fullness, and midface descent. The drawings function as a meditative mapping of intended surgical maneuvers and as a communication tool that many patients find reassuring. Devgan initially kept the studies private but discovered that patients appreciate seeing detailed visual analyses before entrusting their faces to a surgeon.

"Some depict women's faces, others their nude torsos. Drawn on thin sheets of white artist's vellum, they have an earnest, Old World appeal, like the loose studies a painter might make before putting brush to canvas. Except that on each page, there is a series of sharp, emphatic pencil lines radiating out from the subject's nose, eyelids, chin, nipples, identifying room for improvement: mild asymmetry here, "periorbital hollowing" there. The delicate pooch of "submental fullness" beneath a jawline. The ominous "midface descent" of a cheek."

"For Devgan, who is trained in painting, sculpture, and photography, "putting it on paper" is part of her process. It's her homework, a pre-surgical anatomical meditation that helps her map out the exact surgical maneuvers ahead. For a long time she kept these studies to herself, but eventually she realized patients like to see them. Maybe when entrusting your one-and-only face to a surgeon, it's comforting to know that the one you've chosen has the taste and sensitivity of an artist."

Read at Bustle