Account of the process:

Since I'm not great at drawing (or not as good as I would need to be for this project), I came up with the idea of piecing together the scenes I imagined from the vast array of images that can be found online. This is similar to Warhol's use of photographs from magazines that he then recolored and modified slightly for his own purposes. I kind of felt like a director casting parts in a play; for each visual element I had planned to be in the composition, I simply identified the item I wanted and typed that phrase into Google to find what the majority of humanity (at least the computer-owning part) "saw" when it thought of that object. Of course, then I had to select one image from the offerings that fit into the piece--it had to be shaped and positioned properly. It was like finding a compromise between the artist's vision and the public's reception.

The first image above is the triptych with the middle panel complete. This panel alone took no less than 15 unique images to piece together, and it's somewhat apparent from the inconsistent lighting, but I blended them as well as I could and I'm happy with the result. The branches repeat the upward arch of the frames, helping focus even more on the brother's haloed head. There's a pattern overlay because I wanted something to show the wind, which is mentioned in the song lyrics and represented by vocals in between the lyrics at certain points. I think perhaps an actual photograph of snow blowing in wind would be more effective--the pattern doesn't quite fit the overall photographic style. It's also missing the snowflakes from my planning sketch, so perhaps replacing the pattern could kill two birds with one stone.

The second image above is the completed piece. Overall it looks a bit too patchwork for my taste--there's probably settings I could toggle for the whole thing that would bring the colors back together a bit, but I'm not sure what that might be.

I changed the "wind" in the center panel to steam, which suits it much better. I ended up using some blue in the left panel, which changes the color balance, but it was needed because the blanket had to be blue as it is in the last panel, and the sick brother needed cool colors because he's described as pale in the lyrics. I'm happy with the effect.

The people were really challenging to put together because we're very sensitive to faces and anatomy and can easily spot when something is "off." It was also really difficult just finding pictures of people in the right poses, and people who looked enough alike to portray the two brothers, let alone the same brother across panels.