Brooklyn artist Adrian Brandon has been working on this "Stolen" series since February of 2019 but it has been finding a much wider audience lately due to its poignant subject matter. The concept of the series is simple - Brandon draws a portrait of a individual who had their life taken by the police and then spends 1 minute for every year of life they lived coloring in the piece. His own words say it best:

Tamir Rice was 12 when he was murdered, so I colored his portrait for 12 minutes. As a person of color, I know that my future can be stolen from me if I’m driving with a broken taillight, or playing my music too loud, or reaching for my phone at the wrong time. So for each of these portraits I played with the harsh relationship between time and death. I want the viewer to see how much empty space is left in these lives, stories that will never be told, space that can never be filled. This emptiness represents holes in their families and our community, who will be forever stuck with the question, “who were they becoming?”

Go follow @ayy.bee on Instagram or @itsayybee on Twitter for more.

There's plenty more from this series to see in those feeds, as well as a lot of other illustrations done in a myriad of styles. I recommend carving some actual quality time out of your day to pore over all of it.