This week I had to create a persuasive poster to support an environmental cause. I could choose which aspect of sustainability and the environment I wanted to focus on (climate change, loss of biodiversity, sea level rise, the reef, stop damaging developments, more-than-human lives in the city, etc)

Artline 200 0.4mm fine liner, 2B graphite pencil and 110gsm cartridge paper

Sketched roughly the best of the ideas I came up with using a 2B pencil. Once I was happy with the general shapes I went over the sketches with a 0.4mm fine liner to accentuate the details.  

Pollution, oil spills, affecting the ocean and its inhabitants

Luxurious Black Shine is a play on make-up or a shampoo advert, where they're promoting the elusive healthy glow or shine. The fish depicted is personified to imitate a relaxing person sitting in a hot tub getting a luxurious spa treatment to get a healthy glow. In actual fact, oil spills are rather frequent due to poor waste management or accidents aboard cargo ships, which can cause devastating damage to fish and their habitats.

You're looking a bit pale is the most explicit poster idea, as the fish asks a portion of bleached coral if it is feeling alright, due to its lack of colouration. It is a play on the same phrase used by friends or family to see if you are feeling ill due to your pale appearance.

Just like home, depicts a fish tank where the fish has been made at home by the owner presumably by adding features into the tank such as coke cans, bottle tops, and barrels of crude oil. This is a comment on the vast amounts of waste that is currently floating in the ocean that has been present for so long, that it has metaphorically become a part of the furniture.

I am happy with the overall drawings and their meanings. I would have liked to come up with more in-depth metaphorical comments however I found the task extremely challenging to find inspiration without copying their ideas or messages. I ended up having to deprive myself of outside influence, to force myself into making original ideas even if they aren't as effective.

Adobe Sketchbook

I scanned the sketches I did for the ideation phase and imported them onto my iPad. Using Sketchbook, I drew over the imported image using a layer system to not make permanent, destructive additions. I started with sketching the outlines, then moved to colour infilling, and then added shadows and colour gradients using the airbrush tool. 

Unfortunately, I didn't have much freedom when it came to the text in Sketchbook, I would have liked to be able to slightly curve the lettering and use a different font however that would have required exporting the file onto Illustrator or Photoshop.

Retrospectively, I should have made the fish look uncomfortable or replaced it with a fish skeleton to explicitly show that the Oil isn't just a mud bath and that the fish shouldn't actually be enjoying its luxury spa day.

Adobe Sketchbook

As I used layering in the previous poster, I could use masking tools and layering to mould images for the collage work. I picked a close-up image of a fish's scales to add texture to the Fish's body, and I decided to replace the bright red barrel that drew far too much attention, with a more realistic oil barrel. I believe that the use of collage has made the image far more visually interesting.

I would have liked to change the background to something more interesting, however coloured backgrounds would clash too much with the green fish and red barrel, making the image uncomfortable to look at and didn't help the image's flow.

I am, however, very pleased with the outcome of the final poster.