Octopus is a detail of painting Sea. It was the first sketch in the subject of Sea and I didn't know yet how detailed I wanted to get with each sketch. I wanted to put a good foot forward so I spent about 8 hours working on this piece. I drew it entirely from my cartoon memory of what an Octopus looks like. It ended up becoming the central image of the 10Subjects painting (S)ea. I also briefly used a vector version of this piece on a business card, to which cartoonist Lynda Barry commented "Oh, what a great drawing of an encephalopod!"