Washington Post: PBA

The February Medical Mystery is out in today's Washington Post. The piece is about a man who was struck by a drunk driver, sustaining a severe brain injury that left him with aphasia, and suffering from random, uncontrollable emotional outbursts.

Below are the quick thumbnail idea sketches, where I was trying to think through different scenes and explore how to connect the elements of the story clearly. The tricky part, I discovered, was how to illustrate the context of the severe crying episodes, which were inexplicable, and often unrelated to the surrounding circumstances. I submitted the two refined sketches below, and ultimately we went with the elevator direction, which was drawn up on paper with ink and then painted digitally using Corel Painter and Photoshop. Art Direction by Brad Walters.