Creature Feature: Octopus Wants You to Catch If You Can

I have many ideas of different paper sculptures I want to make — sometimes I want to make them because it sounds like it would be fun to make. Flowers are a personal favorite, or a little furry animal because creating the fur out of paper is both challenging and rewarding when the finished piece looks like fur. Then I feel I was successful at mastering that.

Sometimes I have so many ideas, i have a hard time choosing something. That is what happened with “Catch Me If You Can,” a clever octopus made completely out of paper, even the suckers on its eight tentacles. When I was deciding on a new project, I rattled off a handful of ideas to my daughter and asked her what I should do next. She chose an octopus!

What a challenge it was figuring out how to make the suction cups on the tentacles. It did take quite a bit of trial and error until I figured out exactly the right technique to make and attach all those tiny little suction cups to the octopus. Happily, I figured out a way to do just that out of paper and I think it all worked out rather well.

Creature Feature: Illustrating the Giraffe

The other day I was thinking about all the animals I have drawn during the course of my illustration career. Over the years I have drawn animals from all different types of environments such as elephants, frigate birds, peacocks, lizards, monkeys, cardinals, zebras, and lots more. Many of the illustrations were painted in watercolor and gouache or pen and ink line art for various children’s publications, activity pages, games, and greeting cards.

I would have to say that one of my favorite animals to draw is a giraffe. Of course, everyone knows they have that very long neck, but I also like them because they are so tall and I think those long eyelashes give their faces so much character.

Here’s a couple of my giraffe illustrations I’ve done over the years. And, in a few weeks, you will see my next paper sculpture. Yep, you guessed it — a giraffe!