CrashOctopus Blog

Octoleopard by Meg Lyman

16×20″ oil on canvas

SOLD

A commission. I love the feel of oil paint, but canvas is a bit bumpy for my taste. Also, the drying time… gaaak. By the time it’s dry enough to continue, I’ve lost my momentum and have to kick-start my interest. Gouache has spoiled me.

Cupid II by Meg Lyman

11×14″ gouache on Pastelbord

$130 – e-mail to inquire

I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the cephalopods-as-cupid theme. Also, I can’t say enough about how much I like using gouache on Pastelbord. It does chew up brushes, though.

This was my first attempt to apply what James Gurney calls the Windmill Principle. It’s a subtle application, but I like the result.

Stormtrooptopus by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache on board

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I love Star Wars. Helmets are round. Octopus are round. It was inevitable.

Napoleon by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache and ink on board

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This was a fantastically fun commission after Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass by master Jacques-Louis David. I know I didn’t get the horse quite right, but it works, and I actually kinda like the end result. It makes me want to do more master copies with cephalopods replacing the subjects. Might make them more realistic, though, so they fit in with the original painting…

What do you think are some good master works to practice with octopus?

TRON Squid by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache on board

$75 – e-mail to inquire

Streamlined squid shapes go so well with light cycles.

Smurfalopod by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache and ink on Canson paper

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I’m not sure where this came from. Don’t ask. All I know is that his little smurfalopod butt is naked because I can’t figure out how to paint pants on an octopus.

Comrade Derptopus by Meg Lyman

~5×10″ mixed media

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Another odd-size paper experiment. I doodled this derpy guy at work one day, and couldn’t get him out of my brain until I painted him up properly. This doesn’t happen all that often – inspiration strikes all the time, but rarely is it so insistent. Once I finished the painting, I decided he needed borders, and played with acrylic gel medium and Claybord and La Carte and foam core. Interesting lesson: La Carte can be completely denuded with gel medium. I knew it didn’t like moisture, but I didn’t realize I’d end up covered in a cement-like mix of glue and sand. It was fun.

Bonus points if you can decipher my uneducated attempt at Russian half-hidden in the borders.

Marvin the Octopus by Meg Lyman

8×10″ gouache and ink on cold press

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Fantastically fun commission for a great pair of Kevins!

I still can’t figure out how to get that famous gouache “smooth, flat area of color,” but I admit I haven’t tried all that hard. I did this with washes instead. Turned out OK.

Sometimes I find it easy to experiment when doing commissions, because of the lack of emotional attachment to the subject. But sometimes it’s tough to experiment, because you don’t want to mess up art that people have already paid you to do… dilemmas.

Haunted Lantern by Meg Lyman

Around 4×9″gouache and ink.

SOLD

I don’t know. Another long cephalopod experiment. This time with gold gouache. Until recently, I didn’t know they made gold gouache. It is awesome. But it does not scan well.

Balloon by Meg Lyman

~6×12″ gouache, ink, and pastel

SOLD

I have this fairly expensive watercolor paper that is an odd size – 10.5×24.5 cm or something inexplicably weird like that. It’s been sitting around for a while, and one day I got a wild hair and sketched out a bunch of elongated cephalopods on them. After I finished the drawings (feeling very pleased with myself for letting my muse vent), I stared at them with the vacancy usually expressed by my dog when I try to teach him a trick. I hadn’t thought these out. I had no idea what colors to use.

So I turned to my friend the Gimp and did some color tests. I’d been meaning to try out this orange/blue/green combo on something, and it looked like it’d work well on this guy. So I tried it out, and it was fun, but didn’t look finished, so I cut a piece of Sennelier La Carte pastel card and made a border for it. Then I glued the paper to it with acrylic gel medium. The piece now feels finished, and I feel like a slightly bewildered collage artist.