Editorial Illustration: Plastic in the Ocean

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"Plastic debris in the Southern Ocean, previously thought to be pristine"

Finished Illustration - I dramatically cropped the image for the final illustration to make the plastic waste angula fish look more imposing and deepen the atmosphire in the image.

Adobe Photoshop and Mixed Media

For this 2 week project, we needed to create a single illustration for an article, which fit specific measurements. The article I was given was about how plastic debris are polluting areas of the southern ocean, which were previously thought to be pristine.

After thumb nailing many ideas, I came to the idea of using plastic waste in a way that in first glance, simply looks like sea life, but on closer inspection is made out of pieces of plastic. This concept plays on how the article talk about how we didn't believe plastic to have reached there.

The article also talks about how fish are ingesting this plastic unknowingly and the southern ocean was pristine and beautiful. Therefore, I have used beautiful naive goldfish. These fish also act as a focal point to deter the eye away from the angular fish and the fact that it’s made out of plastic waste.

I decided to present the plastic waste as a trickster predator as a metaphor of how plastic waste is engulfing the oceans and killing the wildlife.

Sketchbook work - Development and final idea for the plastic waste monster. I used an angula fish as a base because I wanted something menacing and ugly that tricks fish.