Eel postcard image

Eel postcard image  © Peter Gander

A client who works for CEFAS commissioned me to come up with some eel-themed designs for a conference coming up later in the year in Edinburgh, Scotland. After forwarding some rough ideas, we settled on this celtic design-inspired ‘Eel knot’ as it was seen to not only look striking but also represents one of the creature’s habits of writhing underwater in huge ‘eel balls’ where hundereds of the creatures form a rolling sphere of eeldom, careering downstream in a dark shiny mass! Hand-painted ink linework with charcoal and digital colour. As usual, the type is hand-drawn too.

Re-drawing the design in pencil with a tad more precision thank the original scamp

Getting knotted over the puzzling shapes...

Painting the final linework on Canson Detail Paper, beautifully thin and transparent, so I can see the pencil sketch underneath

Treating this as a completely seperate layer, I drew some stylised ripples in charcoal, later turned to white