The art students received a message from Ms Morgan, our art teacher, that there is an art competition called “Voyage” conducted by the service organisation Ocean Intact for all students in and around Colombo, Sri Lanka. The competition aims at spreading awareness of marine pollution, hence submitted art works must be themed oceans and show something about marine pollution.

I chose to participate since the competition was over the holiday, so I had enough time to work on it. Additionally, I wanted to use the opportunity to improve my painting skills. I decided to use watercolor, which is a media I am not very good in, but would love to improve. As the painting should raise awareness of marine pollution, I chose to depict a sea turtle, as they are particularly threatened by marine pollution. To show pollution, I painted some plastic, cans and other waste in a reef.

The finished piece.

I had new watercolor paint, and I improved a bit since my last watercolor painting, especially when painting wet-on-wet, a technique in which the paint is applied on wet paper, which allows it to diffuse smoothly onto the paper. For this you have to be spontaneous, since the paint does not always run in the direction you planned. I did well in painting the turtle, and I used complementary colors to put emphasis on it.

Apart from being a great opportunity for me personally to improve my painting technique and practicing to show an important message through art, this competition addresses the important global issue of marine pollution, which drives many sea animals towards extinction and threatens especially coral reefs, which are among the richest ecosystems on earth. Ultimately, we are harming ourselves as well through pollution, due to micro plastic that turns up in fish we eat (according to the UN Environment Programme, every square mile of ocean contains around 46 000 pieces of plastic).