Wall Street Journal/Review

Breast Reconstruction

In 2024, Caitlin Choi, art director of the Wall Street Journal/Review, asked me to do the cover illustration for a story about a woman’s journey with breast reconstruction. This is an example of a project that had a fast turnaround time, and there wasn’t too much back-and-forth. Choi mentioned she was interested in somehow showing scaffolding around a breast, and I sat down and thought about it.

I had spent time staring at this replica of a Greek sculpture for years. It had gone from one desk to another in various studio locations. The pose, the missing limbs — I felt like working with something like this would be perfect. Rather than starting with pencil sketches, I went immediately into 3D modeling, posed a torso, and then built scaffolding around her:

I made an initial render and sent it to Caitlin:

Caitlin was thrilled with what she was seeing but said some of the scaffolding was a bit distracting. So I simplified some of the platforms. Here is the final illustration — which won a 2025 Award of Excellence for Illustration from the Society for News Design — as it appeared in print: