The challenge for this Newsweek cover was to depict a hand made of barbed wire.
I wanted it to look believable by being gnarled, twisted and prickly.
The barbed wire was created using a special "brush" that produced the details over any shape chosen.
I made a basic hand shape (not shown) and "drew" the barbed wire on it. The basic hand shape was later deleted leaving only the barbed wire cage.
Here is an alternate view in Maxwell render, you can see the barbed wire hand on a textured surface with small cacti in the distance. The 3 light sources hover over the model and are "invisible" to the camera at render time. The environment is a photo background of a hot sunny sky.
Here is the model in Maxwell Render with the final camera view.
There were 3 lights and a photo background used for this image. I prefer as few lights as possible in my scenes.
Final cover image