Whilst brainstorming ideas for new design concepts, the website Threadless.com held a design competition entitled "Ocean" and asked its' artist community to design images based on the sea and sea life. This got me thinking about messages in bottles, which then developed into model ships in bottles and I really liked the juxtaposition of something which ordinarily is of large scale being contained in a bottle of small scale. After developing this concept further I decided to put one of the seas largest animals, the whale, into a bottle in place of the ship. I wanted to use bold line weights as a way of making the the design echo the style used in modern Neo Classical tattoo designs (tattooing being another interest of mine), but also as a way of balancing the designs elements of ordinarily drastically different sized objects. Once the initial line work was complete and I was happy with the balance of line weights, I then proceeded to shade some areas of the sea in the bottle to help it look deeper and more voluminous, whilst simultaneously bringing the whale to the front of the image and helping it stand out.

With regards to the colours I really wanted to play around with colour transitions and gradients to really help the image "pop". To achieve this I also used different opacity elements such as seaweed, bubbles and starfish, again, giving the water element much more depth. I mirrored the coral colour and off grey blue of the whale in the wall of the bottle which helped amalgamate the contents of the bottle with the outer wall of the bottle, applying a white to show that it was a reflection of both light and of the contents.

People who view this design tend to be drawn in by the colours and assume that this is some kind of commentary of human's impact on the environment. It was never my intent to have a hidden meaning but I am happy that this image evokes thoughts like that - so I just go with it.  

A Drop In The Ocean