Album artwork - Atlantic Shore

I was asked by some friends to create some potential album artwork for their up coming single, they information they gave me wasnt great, the asked me for simple line drawings, nothing really to do with the songs themselves and they asked for maybe a hot air balloon and light bulb design.

They expressed a desire to use the brown background however i really didnt like how it looked so showed them a mock up of something else instead. After none of these took their fancy i drew a few more things up for them.

i got positive feedback from this and they particularly liked the lips, however they wanted to change them but couldnt articulate how they wanted them to be changed and the extent of the art direction was to make the lips "more wavey"

i edited the lips as best i could and sent them three options, as they didnt let me sort out the layout, whoever done it just took the pdf and threw it over that horrible looking brown background without even aligning them or anything and the result is a bit shit. I think this is the reason they didnt go with it in the end but i guess its an experience i can learn from. i need to be dedicated to my work and see it through for start to finish so that whatever i make i can be happy with. i know that if they had used this image, i wouldnt have been proud to put my name to it.