"The Angry Sea"

by M. Genova & S. Zambelli 

Michael and I were reviewing our options for an art contest we wanted to enter. The main concept behind the contest was for artists to submit their interpretations of pre-selected album and song titles. The artist would try to design a cover that would capture the album they selected.

In our case, the first choice we cam across was for an album titled “The Angry Sea”. This title, along with the associated song titles, really sparked our imaginations. With this inspiration, we began the brainstorming process. The first thing that came to my mind was the passage in Luke, which recounts the time when Jesus calms the rising storm.

I felt strongly that this image was to symbolize the struggle that was…and in many ways still is…occurring between Christianity and the world.  Among the things I wanted to portray were things like Christianity taking on Mythology, Jesus as our unmovable protector, and our dependence upon Jesus as our Savior.

To achieve the “Christianity vs. Mythology” message, I came up with the idea of Jesus taking on the mythological god, Poseidon.

I wanted to have this man-made god of the sea rising up, in the form of a large and menacing wave, trying to smash the Word of God.

In contrast to this, we would have Jesus standing before the wave in an posture of unmovable strength.

Michael came up with the idea of using a boat he had previously designed as the boat we would use.

He said that he would place the twelve apostles in the boat, behind Jesus looking fearful for their lives.

I thought this was a great idea and it would add to the symbolism of Jesus as our true protector and Savior.


We drew up some rough sketches and decided to have Michael focus on the main details of this picture while I developed the artwork for another entry we were developing. After a week or two, Michael brought back a beautiful painting of the scene we discussed.

It looked great, but the project was far from complete. It was at this point, that the project was turned over to me while Michael began to work on the background images of another piece we were working on.

I scanned the artwork into the computer. From there I was able to add the necessary touchups, color enhancements, and lighting effects to finalize our artwork. Once we both agreed upon the final look of the art, we combined our efforts for the presentation of our entry. We decided upon the fonts, composition and layout of the presentation and submitted our work.

As far as how we did in the contest? We will never know. This is because the contest was cancelled due to the number of entrants required was not met. Our entry fees were refunded and all rights to the artwork remained with us. So…I decided to go back to our original art and redesign the layout so it would fit on our products in our eStore.