Sea Playground

This is the earliest of my designs, and it looks it — in a way I have grown fond of.

I had just started diving. I was sketching constantly and reading marine encyclopedias cover to cover, and every creature in those books is drawn the same way: flat, side-on, two-dimensional, floating on a white page like a specimen. That was the only visual language I had, so that is how I drew.

At the same time I had just bought my first pair of fins — yellow split fins, which I was absurdly proud of. And my favourite animal was the lionfish. Ridiculous creature. All those spines and stripes and fanned-out fins, moving like it knows exactly how it looks.

So I mixed it all together: encyclopedia flatness, that particular yellow, and a lot of lionfish. It is a beginner's drawing in the best sense — made when everything underwater was still new and I had no idea which parts I was supposed to find impressive.