The task was to create an illustration of a monster, lurking in the deep abyss of our unconsciousness, in this case represented by the sea. The contest holder asked for a monster with tentacles, a lighthouse, probably an inclusion of gold coins and the text "the song in the deep". They asked for a light emitting from the lighthouse, but I decided to change the highlights from a simple ray coming from the house to a general highlighting of the picture, including text, the monster's eyes and tentacles, as well as the gold coins. Many entries had some kind of noble flair, so I tried to avoid that by giving it a more horrorlike appearance to go with the idea. Furthermore I wanted to keep a visible contrast between the front and the background, so it's easy to see what is going on.
Creation process: Sketched by hand, worked on the basics in Paint Tool SAI, finalized it by turning into a vector graphic in Adobe Illustrator (since it should fit all sizes equally well).