Why Octopuses?

My fascination with octopuses began in my final year of college while working on my BFA project—a children’s book about animals. I’ve always been passionate about animals and their emotions, and it bothered me to see them treated as emotionless objects. So, I wanted to create a book to teach children early on, catch them while they’re young, and foster more love for animals. 

What I learned about octopuses at the time, is that they love to play! I found a story about an octopus who was given a plastic jar. It would push the jar across the tank, making it bounce off the other end and return. It would hit the jar over and over, the same way a person might bounce a ball. 

I created these really colorful paintings of animals to go with the stories I found, the octopus from back then is pictured below. I used crayola markers with water and treated them like watercolors. I had discovered this during an exercise where we had to tear off a part of a magazine image and draw in what we tore off. I used markers and accidentally got it wet – I saw how smooth the colors became and was fascinated. 

When working on the animal paintings my professor was walking around checking on everyone, he thought my technique was intriguing and said he could see me developing it over time and learning how to manipulate it even more. I suppose I’ve been pursuing this endeavor ever since. 

I love octopuses because there are endless stories around about how cool they are as creatures and they’re a ton of fun to paint, you can really do anything with them as a subject.

What’s your favorite octopus story?