Past Winners
Feel free to use these to help you with your art piece. But do not be afraid to break the mold and give us something a little different!
CSF 2025
Theme: Urban Ocean Ecosystems
From Lysa: I wanted to convey the relationship between our urban environment and the natural world which exists below the sea. Several of the species of seaweed provide some sort of economic benefit as food/ingredients. Kelp forests provide home/protection to many species, supporting entire underwater ecosystems. The piece is created with micron pen and then scanned into Adobe Illustrator to color and vectorize.
Lysa DuCharmeCSF 2024
Theme: Biodiversity and Aquaculture on the North Coast.
From Grace: My design started out with a drawing done by hand painted in gouache, then scanned into the computer and edited with photoshop, I mask over the colors to make them solid and find the right hues. I like to draw by hand first because it allows me to have a more organic flow, just like the kelp and then clean it up on the computer for a more finished look. I'm inspired by the movement of seaweed and all of it's different shapes, I drew native seaweed species to the northern coast and wanted to share diversity among them. I like to include a sun in my work to depict a perspective of being underwater, in a kelp bed, with the sun shining through the sea.
gRACE KINNEY *Please note the 1st CSF poster in 2023 was not chosen from a contest and does not follow most of the guidelines we have for current poster contests.
Tips and FAQ’s
Each year we hold a poster art contest to celebrate that year’s festival! Here are past winners! Rules change every year for the contest, please refer to the application for each year’s contest for rewards and rules. Rules stated below can be different on the most up to date application.
There are some things that will most likely be similar each year:
No A.I. generated art work of any kind at all.
Reward possibilities: The contest winner will get a cash prize, and have their artwork featured on that year’s poster and t-shirt. (Reference the poster application for the current rewards).
All ages can enter the contest. If you are a minor, where you live, you must get your guardian’s permission to enter the contest.
No late entries. We make no exceptions.
Tips and FAQ for a successful entry.
Follow the brief listed on the current poster application for that year.
Seaweed is the star of the show, always. You can have animals and humans on the art piece, but the star and focus of the work should be seaweed. Unless stated otherwise in the current brief.
We aim to choose art that encompasses the theme of the festival. Whatever is submitted, is what we have to choose from. We will always strive to choose art with seaweed in it.
We want to showcase the marine diversity of the area. Please make sure the seaweed and fauna on the submitted art piece can be found in California. (Our board and judges contain experts in Marine phycology, ichthyology, ecology, biology, etc.)
Diversity of Seaweeds is a plus. We tend to see the same seaweed species over and over; if you showcase local species from the area where the festival is that year, it will be appreciated.
Please follow the color palette guidelines. We love a full color piece for the poster print, but if there isn’t a 3 color - color way it becomes too expensive to screen print a t-shirt. A 3-color way option will make it much easier to make t-shirts. We often have to eliminate entries that don’t allow us to make a screen printed shirt/garment.
If the rules still state that the art piece can be made with any medium, please note that the piece will be printed on a 2-D poster and onto a garment. We welcome creativity with different mediums, but keep in mind how the submitted entry will be used and formatted on to those items.
Winners can be asked for a higher quality file of their art. If the submission is compressed, please note that there is a have a higher quality option available in the artist statement.
This is an all ages festival, please keep the art G rated. No smoking, drug use, or other PG 13+ actions please on the art please.
We do not consider submissions that do not have anything to do with seaweed, the ocean, and / or the California coast.
We have a panel of 10+ art professionals that screen the submissions before the winner is picked. They will spot all A.I. entries, along with pieces made with only Canva assets and A.I. assisted traced pieces. We do not recommend using Clip Art in your composition. We encourage you to use references but create your own work.
Please provide publicly accessible places where more of your artwork can be viewed.
We will be unable to pay the contest winner’s travel to the California Seaweed Festival.