Tinned Fish and Seafood Collection

In January of 2025, I was challenged to create a collection based on a trend as part of Cat Coquillette’s Art of Collections program! The tinned fish trend and the “fisherman aesthetic” immediately jumped out to me and I decided to start by illustrating various types of tinned seafood and caviar. For once, I resisted the urge to jump straight into illustrating and really poured my heart into the planning stage. I sketched thumbnails for different patterns and illustrations and experimented to choose a fun, but limited color palette.

I absolutely LOVE tinned fish! Besides the fact that the branding and packaging are so fun, I grew up in the Baltimore area, so I’ve always appreciated and enjoyed almost all seafood. When I was thinking of ways to expand this collection beyond sardines and cavair, I remembered a 4th grade trip the Baltimore Museum of Industry where my classmates and I did an oyster canning activity. This was one of my favorite field trips ever! We got to have different jobs like shucking (removing a marble from a wired together oyster), printing labels on an old fashioned press, and filling and sealing the cardboard cans. Baltimore was a major hub for oyster canning, so I had to pull that into this collection with some vintage-inspired oyster cans.

My Process

I often illustrate in this “flash sheet” style, which typically refers to curated collections of tattoo designs. I love to illustrate lots of different elements that I can then use together, individually (for things like stickers), or repeated in different ways to create patterns. I love to mix working with pen and paper and digitally on my iPad using Procreate. I usually start by sketching on my iPad where I can easily hit undo, move things around, or change sizes of part of my drawing. Once I’m happy with my sketch, I move to creating a final sketch on paper. I’m almost always rushing through this stage so that I can get straight to inking! I use micron pens to create detailed line art before scanning what I’ve inked into my computer. Once I remove the background in Photoshop, I’m left with essentially a coloring page on my iPad. Then I get to drop in colors and play around until I’m happy with the final product!

Ways to Shop

If you’re a fan of this collection, you can shop art prints here on my website. In my RedBubble shop, you can get these patterns and illustrations printed on a wide variety of different products. And finally, if you are interested in fabric or wallpaper, head to my Spoonflower shop! If you have a specific sewing (or wallpaper) project in mind and want to request a different scale of any of the patterns, feel free to reach out via my contact form.

This collection was truly a joy to create and I hope to do more food related illustrations in the future!