Studio Brief 1: Sinking design

"Throw me a line, I'm sinking fast" is the lyric that inspires this design. I want it to look like someone is struggling who is sinking in the water.

I've started off by drawing an illustration of a hand, for which I am using a few different sources such as photos and my own hand. I've drawn it in the position of reaching for something.

Next I want to try to make an illustration of water for the background, as seen below. I've used a photograph from the internet to see if it'll work and I have found it too difficult, as it has ended up just looking like messy squiggles that don't resemble anything.

Since the drawing of the water has failed, I've decided to find a photograph I took last year of water in a swimming pool that could be quite fitting. Below is my development of this and different variations I've tried out.

Here I have made the water only show through on the fingernails which makes an interesting effect.

I altered the colours using brightness/contrast, hue and saturation and levels etc on photoshop. The blue of the water was too vivid so I have dumbed it down a little.

My design for the interim crit:

I like the vividness of this design, and I feel that the colours are a nice mixture of neon and subtle. The only thing I have found is that some people can't tell that it is water, which ruins the effect of the cover design. I don't feel this is my strongest design so I'm not developing it further, however I think I will still submit it to Secret 7", because why not.