The Space Between Death and Donation •The New York Times

This illustration was made il less than 24 hours from the very first New York Times call to the final delivery.
Working for newspaper is a very best exercise to train mind muscles. There is little space for many thoughts as we have to be set to read the text, understand the main topic and develop at least 3 ideas to submit our client.

So we need a bit of experience and mostly a method, certain steps that we are sure are going to lead to the goal.

The topic was quite complicated:
"What Happens When the Brain Goes Quiet but the Heart Continues Beating?"
It talks about patients after an accident or some sort of unexpected brain death and the topic of the organs donation. The time between the death of the brain and the urgency to transplant organs before they die too.

Full article can be found here on New York Times website

Based on the Art Director suggestions, which I fully agree on, we moved into an abstract/metaphoric direction.
All 3 sketches are set into an undefined environment with a human figure on a soil of something. There is clearly a transition feeling in all of them and I decided to catch not the moment of the brain death or the organ transplant but the space in between.
It leads to a very suspended image open to a broad interpretation.
And mostly, avoiding to be didactic means avoiding the sad side of the story.

the first final version was made just using 2 colors, purple and pink but the art directors liked to try with a richer color palette so basically started from scratch and repainted everything. I don't believe too much in Photoshop filter or similar, I mean yes, minor adjustments could be easily done that way and I do that too.
But starting from scratch is a way to discover new elements we can improve to make a better final piece