Illustration for the New York Times' Sunday Review. It's a
fascinating piece that looks at a new research initiative into the Brain that hopes answer, among other questions ... 'how the brain generates thoughts, dreams, memories, perception and consciousness...' This was nice, quick job with the turnaround ending up being about 4 hours for roughs and final.
At first I was thinking about focusing on the neurons in the brain but replacing the 'cell' part with faces. Which, although was getting there wasn't quite working. As the art director quite rightly informed me, the neurons looked more like trees or onions.
In the end we went with the classic Head option, with the final image being stretched out to fill the space and the various parts moving around a bit. Normally going from rough to final I would swap over to using gouache and painting it, which can sometimes mean I tighten up and make the image a bit too clean. This time however I was enjoying the pencil marks so stuck with it. Thanks to
Alexandra Zsigmond for the commission and great art direction.
