Eyeball Pattern (The Pearl Book Illustration)

A pattern design for the inside cover page of an illustrated edition of John Steinbeck's classic novella, The Pearl. The story revolves around a young man's obsession with a pearl, and here the eyeball motif reflects not only the abstract shapes of pearls and reflections, but also a symbolic sense of being watched and hunted. The medium used was a dry brush pen for the ink blot pearl, which was then edited in photoshop before being transformed into a vector graphic pattern in illustrator.