OCTOPOLYPUS!

IT'S AN OCTOPOLYPUS!

Recently, I actually had some time to do some work for myself! I definitely took advantage of that and did a couple of graphite drawings. They were both very much inspired by my recent projects.

The water surrounding Coiba National Park is a hotspot for coral reefs. The island, for the most part, has very little human footprint so it is essentially in pristine condition. Juan Mate is a coral expert and I've learned quite a bit from him. I never really understood how coral worked. I knew that it is a living organism, but that was about it. Coral is made up of a huge colony of little polyps. They create a hard skeleton around their vulnerable bodies as protection. Like the sand dollar or urchin, the remaining part that we like to display is the skeleton of the animal. The octopolypus is an invented hybrid of two different coral polyps and an octopus. Although this guy will never exist, there are decorator crabs that will have coral growing on its shell and there is also a type of coral that has eight arms...so why not? I mean, jackolopes are real, right?

The other drawing was inspired by the sustainable fishing guidebook I designed. I sort of have become obsessed with fish eyes. These are all the groupers that can be fished around Coiba National Park. All the eyes are to scale. It's crazy. Some groupers can get as big as 5 feet. Crazy.