New Year, New Motivational Marine Life!

New Year, New Motivational Marine Life!

Motivational Marine life

The Motivational Marine Life Range has been one of the most popular of recent years.

58mm badge showing a cute turtle that says "Turtley Amazing" on a white background

The cute watercolours depicting sea creatures big and small, conveying a message to help you stay motivated and positive have been developed into a range of cards, mugs and badges.

I first created this range back in 2018 and I just loved the simplicity of the characters.

I had been given some new watercolours to try out and tried some new techniques. I had also just back into painting again, and I felt this was good practice!

Image shows a stylised turtle illustration swimming amongst kelp and coral

When I released them via my store, their popularity grew, but I also developed my drawing and painting techniques.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2020, and I decided I would recreate them with a more realistic look.

I felt much more confident in my abilties and I loved creating the illustrations.

I was even able to create a series of colouring pages and created my own colouring book (with helpful facts).

Open Colouring book showing a page of a whale shark ready to be coloured in

But something niggled at me about these images, they just weren't as popular as the motivational marine life, I couldn't work out why...

Until I realised they didn't convey the same positive and encourage message that the orginal drawings had. They were lovely to look at, the colours bold, but they didn't convey the MGB message I had orginally intended.

 

The Mini Geek and the Mr Geek watching some fish at Plymouth Aquarium

But why Marine Life?

Well, the Mini Geek (nearly 11 years old at time of writing) is a HUGE fan of all things Marine Biology ever since he was little and enjoyed watching Octonauts. We have visited lots of aquariums over the years, including the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, the Sea Life centre at the well known coastal town of Birmingham (I kid!!), The Deep at Hull and the Mini Geek absolutely lost his mind when we visited the American

The Mini Geek being very excited about seeingn a life size blue whale at the American Museum of natural history

Museum of Natural History and saw a life sized Blue Whale. (Seriously, they are HUGE)

I have always wanted MGB products to convey a positive message and I do love a good pun, and with the Mini Geek's help I came up with a variety of animals and some wonderful puns.

 

 

This leads us to now. Once again I revisited the illustrations and decided I would combine the cuteness of the original drawings with a little bit of realisim, rather than them floating (excuse the pun...) on a plain white background.

Comparrison between the original turtle drawing and the new, better version

I am so happy with how these drawings have turned out.Octopus badge on backing card I have put them on a mug, and created little prints and badges already! I hope to include them on some more products, so look out for those!

 

The Marine Life products are available here!

 

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