There’s something incredibly fun and rewarding in being a part of someone else’s gift. Coming up to Christmas I was called in to help create a beautiful little quote into a piece of art for an old school friend’s partner.

The inspiration behind this piece was his favourite quote – a lyric from the Smith’s:

“All I ever wanted was to leave this world more beautiful”

We also wanted to incorporate his love of plants and fishing into the work, to try and make it a bit less “girlie” than what I typically produce! The “fish” related elements for the background were pulled from some incredible source images of Australian fish. The oval shapes, rippling drape like fins and small rounded scales were developed from those images.This was balanced out with areas of plain black and small leaves.

In terms of materials I used a combination of pacer, Copic Ink markers (various sizes), Sharpie permanent markers, ink, gold acrylic paint and coloured pencil.

In the images you can see some of the progression from black and white, into a “green” themed image.

Let me know what you think in the comments below!