Indie Squid Kid

I hereby decree that September is Cephalopod Month!

Every month graphic artist Able Parris creates original desktop wallpaper, and his September calendar really caught my attention…for obvious reasons.

Three sizes are available this month:

1440×900

1280×1024

iPhone

Able’s work has been featured on Indie Squid Kid once before, with his kick-ass Nautilus collage.

Birthday squid cartoon, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

Here is the reason why Natalie Metzger is the Official Artist of Indie Squid Kid. For my birthday last year, she sent me this amazing cartoon. This year, she continued the trend by sending me the physical version of this!

I have really awesome friends.

For the final post of Art Week, here is the Most Awesome Thing Ever.

Sadly, I don’t own this, but DAMN I wish I did! Two different sizes of this print are for sale over at www.brandonbird.com.

And it just so happens my birthday is coming up this month.

I’m just saying…

Lovecraftian, originally uploaded by jawboneradio.

Monster by Mail is the brain child of podcaster and cartoonist Len Peralta. The concept is simple–you give him money, and he sends you an original piece of art. Give him a little bit more, and you get a YouTube video of him creating your monster. At the time of this writing, the rates are $25/$35…a pretty good deal for original art.

When Len first launched the site, the rules were you had to give him an adjective, any adjective, and he would make a monster for you based on that word. Mine was “Lovecraftian.” Here’s the video.

Through the early iterations of MbM there were various other themes: cryptozoology, zombies, Halloween, etc. However, all you have to do now is give your monster a name and click the PayPal link you Len will make it for you!

Here is one I commissioned last Halloween. It is titled, simply, “The Were-Squid.”

When Len isn’t drawing awesome monsters, he is producing and co-hosting Cleveland’s best podcast, Jawbone Radio.

Every Labor Day weekend, Atlanta, GA is overtaken by Dragon*Con, a massive media convention that covers a wide variety of genres: Sci-Fi and Fantasy, science and technology, TV and movies, literature and comic books. And of course, people dressed as Stormtroopers and superheroes.

Deep in the bowels of one of the three downtown hotels that host the convention, is an area known as “Artist’s Alley.” It is here that the booths and tables of all the attending comic book artists are set up, and it is here where I first discovered the works of Andy Lee.

Andy practices a form of Chinese brush painting known as Cha’han Buddhist splash stlye, and for $20*, he will produce a custom painting of pretty much anything you want–a dragon, Batman, a zombie breakdancer, or, perhaps, some sort of cephalopod.

*At least that has been his rate all three times (over the past 5-7 years) I’ve paid him for a commission.

Andy is one of the nicest people you will every meet, and here’s why. A few years ago (I can’t actually remember. Let’s say…three.), I asked Andy to paint an octopus. He painted one in a rather crazy style (posted above), but was worried that I wouldn’t like it. (He shouldn’t have been, it is awesome!) So, he painted another in a more realistic (but every bit as awesome) style (below), but only charged me for one!

Find out more about Andy Lee at, coincidentally, FindAndy.com.

Never Look Back, originally uploaded by Cryptonaut.

And now Art Week takes a dark turn…

I feel slightly ashamed to say so, but I find this picture endlessly amusing. It’s something about the shock in the poor little guy’s eyes…the horrible realization…the fact that it seems to have taken him quite some time to realize that something was wrong…

This also makes me hungry for sushi…does that make me a bad person?

I bought this print from the artist, Andrew Bell (who signed it), a few years ago at his art show at Wootini, an art gallery and vinyl toy shop in Carrboro, NC. It is still available for sale (along with its equally disturbing companion piece) at Andrew’s website, DeadZebra.com. For a daily dose of adorably creepy monsters (both with and without tentacles) by Andrew Bell, check out the Creatures in my Head.

Also, for the record, I don’t know what kind of cephalopod this is supposed to be, unless he has four more stumps on the other side…

It seemed only fitting that the next Art Week installment after “The Kraken Always Follows Its Heart” would be the picture that hangs next to it in my front hall (next to the coat rack, and the first thing you see when you come in through the front door)–”The Squid Tree” by Ursula Vernon.

Depicted here is a weird little guy in blue, happily eating his lunch, but little does he realize that the tree–if it is a tree–has its eye on his sandwich…

Ursula is another amazing artist that I have the good fortune of knowing personally. The various and sundry subjects of her fabulous illustration include ninja frogs, the wombat tarot, bird golems, and some very dangerous fruit. See more of her work on deviantART, her personal site, Metal & Magic, and her webcomic, Digger.

Of course, for the purposes of this blog, I feel obligated to direct you to some more specific examples of her cephalopod-themed art:

• Walking the Kraken
• Happy Cthulhu
• Cuttlefish Hat
• Cthulhu’s Day Out
• Klimt’s Octopus

Welcome back to Art Week! Today we have something that’s actually hanging on a wall in my house, “The Kraken Always Follows Its Heart” by my good friend Leah Riley. Leah is a graphic artist, creator of comics, and purveyor of robots. Once upon a time when we were still co-workers, we used to keep a running list of funny things people would say that sounded like the titles of non-existent songs by a band that didn’t have a name. Well, it made sense to us, and this is one of them.

At the time of this writing, there are still two baby doll tees of this very design (in black and red) for sale in her Esty store, but even if they’re gone, you are guaranteed to find something both awesome and ridiculously cute.

Leah is also the co-creator of the webcomics Willrad and Robohobo and the co-author of the manga review blog Hobotoku. See her art portfolio online at www.leahstuff.com.

Welcome to Art Week here at Indie Squid Kid! I know that the frequency of my posts have dropped off lately, but starting today, I’m going to ramp things up significantly with a new post everyday for the next six days. As the name suggests, Art Week will focus on cephalopod art, mostly from my personal collection. However, it seemed appropriate to kick the week off with this new selection from Natalie Metzger, the creator of the the Indie Squid Kid logo, and friend to cephalopds everywhere.

If this were just a picture of a squid, it would still be awesome, but to have the squid drinking bourbon, my hard liquor of choice…that makes it a stroke of genius in my book! I also wanted to point out the label on the bottle: “Maker’s Mark of Madness”…I came up with that!

If you don’t understand why a squid would be drinking bourbon, please check out Natalie’s original post at The Fuzzy Slug and read the story that accompanies it–all will be made clear.  Also, while you’re at it, download the first episode of her new podcast, Radio Isopod!

cuttlefish…er…nautilus, originally uploaded by able parris.

Here’s another piece of collage art, this time featuring the chambered nautilus, Nautilus pompilius (although it might actually be a Palau nautilus, Nautilus belauensis–the two are very similar).

The nautilus is, of course, the only extant shelled cephalopod, and the fossil record indicates that it has changed very little in the past 500 million years. There remain 6 species of nautilus (and 2 genera), all confined to the Indo-Pacific, inhabiting deep slopes of coral reefs.

Although this piece is not part of my collection, the original just happens to be on the wall next to my desk at Newfangled Web Factory, and it’s creator, Able Parris, is one of my coworkers.

To see more of Able’s fantastic collage art, visit www.ableparris.com.