mesh pattern

Hello everyone,

I wonder how I could do something like the second or third panel. Especially the third one, which has sinks that have various sizes and orientations. At first I tried to use attractors and move some vertices of the mesh into the Z axis. The result would be rather circular, though, than elliptical. so it would not have any orientation. and in general it stays flat. I wonder if they used any sort of voronoi and then WB it. 

Anyone has an idea how could I approximately reach that effect of those two panels?