Exercise - A menu card

Task - to produce an illustration for use on the menu of a quality fish restaurant - one of a chain in major European cities. The menu utilises fresh ingredients and the ambience is modern, contemporary and bright in design. The illustration will be small on the actual menu, but should be able to use as a logo on stationery and also in large format on vans etc.
For this I researched on the web various images and examples of menus, posters and paintings of fish food based work for inspiration and with the intention of creating a mood-board.

Mood-board

I really like the symbolic images of the fish but wonder if this would follow the brief of showing an image of edible food. The traditional paintings such as the Manet in the middle (was that a Michael Jackson song?), whilst being really good, didnt seem suitable but I did like the abstract images  and felt that in the context of a menu image, these could be really nice. Although they are obviously not an edible subject, I really liked the image of the Koi and decided to do a few sketches.

Whilst I had fun doing the Koi drawings, I felt they were unsuitable for the brief but thought the fluidity of
the way the shapes appeared, especially in the image below, held some attraction, and would work as a posslble brand image or logo. The image below works really well I think especially with the soft colour tones.

The image below is a variation on the same theme but the colours are a bit too lurid and cartoon-like. I have tried to make the fish slightly more edible looking but seem to have failed in this instance.

I then went down another track thinking about representing the fish image as if it had been painted in a 'stained -glass window' style. Not sure where this idea came from but started with a basic drawing below. I will have a go on Photoshop to see if I can make it more interesting and colourful... not sure if I can make them a bit happier though....do fish get depressed?

Final Image

I'm quite pleased with the watercolour image above. I think the colours look fresh and I could see it working well with the right font. I think it could work well on a number of different backgrounds and could be used in a number of different ways, such as for signage, menus and general stationery or as a generic logo.