I have a serious love for sailing, but since moving to the desert, it's been difficult to get my sailing fix. I saw the quote above by Thomas S. Monson recently, and was inspired to make a sailboat graphic with a focus on textures and shapes. Like most of my work, I began with a sketch on paper, and proceeded to create the image in Photoshop. I wanted to give a distinct downward direction to the overall image, which I accomplished by making the boat's hull a chevron-like shape that pointed downwards. The mast actually starts off of the image, and descends down into the hull, continuing on that idea. As for the sails, I wanted to show the stitching found on many sails, but didn't want anything that complex, so I opted for spacing between angled rectangles that were cut into the shapes of the sails. For the waves, I chose oversized circles that overlapped, just as real waves will roll into each other. I chose to make the waves large rather than a lots of smaller ones to give the image the feeling of being at sea. As the quote mentions the wind, there was no way I could leave that out, but rather than use swirly lines as many do to project the wind, I went with straight lines of varying lengths, which also act as motion lines, so it appears that the sailboat is moving across the sea.

The quote was the trickiest part of creating this entire graphic, as I had a lot of trouble fitting it properly next to the sailboat. In the end, I decided to tilt the text along the line of the jib (the sail on the left) since leaving the text horizontally broke the continuity of the image. By tilting the text, it almost acts as the wind flowing off of the water and into the sails.

Since I wanted to utilize several different textures, I searched the web for free textures that would work well together and with the colors I wanted. The first texture was used for the background, to give it a whispy, sort of mystical feeling, but with a lower opacity so as not to overpower the rest of the image. The second texture is a scratched metal that can been seen on the hull and mast of the boat, and represents the rough journey most sailboats (and sailors) experience. The third paper-like texture was used for the sails, as modern sails are typically a mix of cloth and cardstock in feeling. Finally, the fourth texture, which was originally titled "psychedelic paper," worked perfectly for the waves, as it completed the watery-like look I was going for.