A great article for Scientific American about research they're doing on reanimating dead brain tissue. Specifically pig brains hooked up to a machine that mimics the heart. It also included a nerve inhibiter in it to prevent it from becoming aware... I have done a lot of pig illoz and seemed appropriate to concentrate on the human side and the questions of bringing back loved ones.

In the original thumbnails I had thought a sort of play off of Shakespeare's Hamlet (Poor Yorick) visual, but Forest thought it would be better and more thoughtful if the lady related to the skull more. Like it was a loved one, or a child lost... There were lots of great ideas here in the thumbnails... Some strong directions I may come back to down the road.

I shot some reference photos of Lee and Victoria to make the hands resting on the skull feel soft and natural... (I used the skull off the studio skeleton “Bob.”) Kind of humorous trying to style a photo without removing his head, but I got something that worked pretty well.

I added some more symbolism into the illustration with the background being dead vines and leaves on the left side and living blooming flowers on the right. I decided to add butterflies coming from the skull.... I went with a a more squared off composition rather than the profile and a tight cropping that would be more impactful as a full page.

The final I painted in gouache... I wanted the color to be warm and glowing.
Everything on this one seemed to flow just right. No second thoughts...well except making her head/hair a bit smaller... it all went pretty much like I'd hoped.

Much thanks to Michael Mrak for the opportunity to jump on this after a vacation... Super fun painting, and a brilliant type layout to go with it.