Airship Attacked by an Octopus

Airship Attacked by an Octopus, ink sketch on paper, 2009, 8.5" x 11".

Friends sometimes ask me (& this is true, it happened the other day -- this is for you, Jim) where I get my ideas from. I usually avert my eyes, look at the floor, cough a bit, & say something like, "Oh, they just pop into my head", which is true, but sometimes I can trace the ideas back a bit. Like this one.

Taking the somewhat innocuous example of the giant octopus attacking the airship (or the regular-sized octopus attacking a very small airship), one might wonder what the hecking heck I was thinking bringing them together like this. I might wonder that, too, usually, but this time I can trace the elements back to their source, or something like that.

The octopus: I was looking idly at Wikipedia following links from something to some other thing. I found I was reading about the British comedy series "Blackadder" (long a favorite of mine, though I rarely get to see it, except bits on YouTube), & I came upon the phrase "magnificent octopus", which was a comedic corruption of "magnum opus" ("great work", masterpiece). So, that sort of stuck in my mind, especially as Eliot Katz's & my "magnificent octopus", "Love, War, Fire, Wind" is due to come out soon...

The airship: just the other day, I did another drawing entitled "Shipwreck in the Mountains", which in itself was loosely based on the idea that Noah's ark might still be intact on Mt. Ararat. So, the idea of a shipwreck stranded in the mountains has an odd sort of logic to it. I thought the drawing of the wreck reminded me a bit of an airship in its structure:


"Shipwreck in the Mountains", 2009, ink on paper, 11" x 8.5".

Also, possibly (& here I'm just guessing), the suggested wrecked superstructure of the wreck reminded me a bit of an octopus' tentacles. And then it popped into my head, an airship attacked by an octopus. The rest is history.


The original sketch idea on an orange sticky note.

So there you have it. By following this simple process of word & image association, you too could create a surprising drawing. It's up to you.