Editorial illustration for children's magazine

This is a self-initiated project, following a brief set by AQUILA magazine for the Make Your Mark Illustration Bootcamp course that I have been taking this year.

The brief was to create an illustration to accompany an article about the science of coral, for AQUILA's issue on Oceans that was published this summer. The magazine's audience are children aged 8-14.

Since they said their issue would be mostly blue, I decided to go with an alternative color palette of green, purple, yellow, orange and pink. I researched specific corals and animal species from the Tubbataha reef in the Philippines. I found out that the sea turtle is an important helper of corals, so I wanted to draw a human and sea turtle coming together to support the thriving of the coral ecosystem – literally holding corals on the turtle's shell.

On the right-hand page, the illustration features a scientific diagram of the coral's make-up (zoomed in with a magnifying glass) and references to the threats to corals (bleaching, overfishing, fish nets, anchors and even star fish, which eat corals!).