To me, illustration is a gateway between what is real and what is not. It can be used to describe reality, but it will never have the same realistic quality of a photograph, and that is where its strengths lie. With illustration, you can bend reality in any way you like.
My illustrations are inspired by scientific drawings, which are used to describe reality, but in my version they describe a different vision of the body. It is an imagination of what happens in the body when we illustrate.