Since May is Mental Health Awareness month, I illustrated this header to accompany my article on the gut-brain and mental health connection for Cooking Light. The first orange version of this illustration ran with the piece, the rest are alternatives I provided my editor. 

The backgrounds are handpainted gouache textures, the texture within the brain and gut is a turing effect I created in Photoshop, while the gut-brain seamless pattern itself was handdrawn in Illustrator. I had a lot of fun conceptualizing this illustration; if you're interested in knowing more about the nascent field of nutritional psychiatry, here's a link to my published article: https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/gut-brain-connection-for-mental-health