Girl in the Ocean
This illustration was created for a contest run by The Modern Green Book (MGB), a source for communities to learn about and locate Black-owned businesses and organizations. The goal of the contest was to capture the essence of summer and emulate the theme of waves for their upcoming magazine cover. When I hear the word “waves,” I think of a surfer. I envision a girl spending her days at the beach, experiencing the freedom and comfort of being submerged in the crystal- clear water. My concept captures the moment she emerges from the ocean to take her first breath. After submiting my design, I was honored to be chosen as a semi- finalist. The semi-finalist artwork were posted on Instagram for voting. I received overwhelming support from fellow artists and gained over 600 likes and votes. Even though I didn’t win the contest, I am extremely proud of this illustration.
Concept, Research
When I think of the word Waves what comes to mind is a surfer. I imagine a girl spending her days on the beach trying to catch the biggest wave of the day. I imagine the freedom and comfort she feels being submerged in the crystal-clear water. My concept for Girl in the Ocean was portray the moment she came up from the water to take her first breath. I wanted to illustrate her taking in the moment and feeling nothing but freedom. As I continued the develop my idea, I thought of the moment from The Little Mermaid when Ariel comes up for air for the first time and the freedom she felt. I wanted to capture that feeling in one single image and that’s when I decided to sketch a girl flipping girl flipping her hair.
Sketches
Next, I sketched out various hair combinations in Procreate. Along the way, I combined her hair with the waves to give the sense of fluidity and motion that I was searching for.
Once I had a solid idea about the color palette, I brought the line art into Adobe Photoshop. I started by adding base colors and blocking out shapes to create clipping masks. Since there were so many blue, green, and purple variations, I randomly placed colors and slowly adjusted them shape by shape, allowing me to focus on individual sections at one time. Next, I placed a gradient on each mask but it didn’t have the painterly style I was trying to achieve. Then, I tried layering multiple colors with different opacities over each other. The overlapping colors fit perfectly into the ideas of waves, creating a textured style, and playing into the idea of motion without being too overwhelming for the viewer. All that was left to do was to add in the details.
