The Lighthouse and the Sea
This was a week-long personal project that I completed in October 2023, inspired by the prompt given by the Mini Print Cantabria competition.
I wanted to represent the lighthouse as a symbol of hope, with its beams of light breaking through the wild and dangerous waves.
The style for this illustration was greatly inspired by cubism, and I used bold geometric shapes to create uncertainty and confusion, and to create sharp, threatening angles.
I also made the lighthouse very small, to add to the sense of intimidation.
I toyed with the idea of making the waves more realistic, and adding patterns, but felt that they distracted from the mood of the piece.
I created several coloured composition studies and decided to take my second idea forward to the digitisation stage. I liked the flow of the curves of the waves, and the position of the lighthouse in this composition the most.
As a part of a risograph print workshop I took part in through university, I produced several prints on various coloured papers.
My favourite print was one on a speckled paper- I think the texture adds another subtle layer of chaos.
In reflection, I should have tried printing the design on several more different coloured papers, if not just to discover how the illustration may look with different base colours.
