Blue Fish Illustration — A Master Class with Masha Mars

MASTER CLASS · PROCESS NOTE

Blue Fish, from drawing to place

This Blue Fish illustration was created during a master class with illustrator Masha Mars. The exercise explored how a standalone illustrated motif could begin to live inside a restaurant setting.

It used to sit in my portfolio as a commercial branding case study. That framing became bigger than the work itself. What matters here is the process: the fish, the flowers, the experiments with scale, and what I learned by seeing the illustration in context.

A study, not a client case study

Some works are more useful as records of practice than as polished portfolio claims. Blue Fish belongs to that category. The restaurant mockups show how the drawing behaves when it leaves a blank page, but they are part of the exercise—not evidence of a completed branding commission.

IN CONTEXT

Scale changes the drawing

On the exterior mockup, the fish stops behaving like a small illustration and starts competing with architecture, distance and signage. That shift was one of the useful parts of the class: the same drawing can feel completely different once it has to inhabit a place.

SEPARATE ELEMENT

The flowers came later

The floral element was drawn separately from the fish. Keeping the pieces independent gave me room to test balance and composition before combining them, rather than locking the whole image too early.

PROCESS

Drawing the fish and flowers

The timelapse is probably the most honest way to keep this project alive. It shows the illustration forming before the mockups and before the story around it became too polished.

Why it belongs in the blog

Not every illustration needs to earn its place by becoming a portfolio case study. Some works are useful because they mark a class, an experiment, or a new way of seeing a familiar problem. Blue Fish is one of those pieces for me.

Credit: created during a master class with illustrator Masha Mars.

If you are looking for commissioned food or restaurant visuals, see my Food & Menu Illustration work. For more sketches, studies and process notes, continue through the aduk.art blog.