Whales, medium ones, that live in Oregon. This is what the new desktop screenspace from FORTPORT looks like. 3 friendly medium-sized giants, categorized for your desktop! Actually there are quite a few whales that call Oregon home, but these three spoke to me in particular. They’re almost all exactly the same size, and also happened to fit nicely together on screen. I’ve got several sizes for you, including iPad & iPhone, just in case you want to get mobile with your Cetacea.

Make sure you keep our oceans clean and don’t clutter your desktop with junk! These fragile behemoths hate polluted waters, and will totally swim off your desktop if it gets dirty. These are for the discerning desktop user. No garbage!

1900 x 1200 |  1680 x 1050 |  1440 x 900 |  1280 x 800 |  iPad | iPhone

What started all this business was the Oregon Coast Chart (below). Originally I wanted to include all of these fine specimens but it just didn’t seem right so I decided to focus on the sedan-like Cetaceans. I didn’t realize we had so many giants swimming in our coastal waters! Blue whales freak me right out, their tongues alone are 20 feet long. All the dolphins & porpoises surprised me as well, I’ve yet to see one of these shiny little beasts out there in the waves.

Bringing these guys to life was a nice learning experience. I now know more than I ever expected about whale anatomy. Since I wrote a post recently about sharing process, I thought I’d do the same! Here’s a peek behind the curtain for these guys:

I started out searching for the right image and then just started making basic shapes in Illustrator. Then, I brought them over piece by piece to their new home in Photoshop, where slowly these 3 friends came to be. Specifically, the Humpback Whale offered the most visual interest with its extremely long pectoral fins and barnacled nose.

In the end some textured layers helped round out the whale to the look I wanted. This was also a great way to help blend some of those darker areas with the lighter ones. There were a few other whales that didn’t make it that got to this stage, like the Minke and the Blue, but they now rest quietly in file folder land, on a long, extended nap. Don’t worry, I feed them krill.