Our first assignment in Animals, People, and Those in Between with Marina Zurkow was to do a portrait of ourselves with our spirit animal. I couldn’t choose between a monkey or an octopus, so I decided to hybridize the two and came up with the monktopus octokey. First, I sketched it out on the chalkboard wall in my kitchen, then I took a photo of myself in front of it. Then I “painted” over the photo in Photoshop to produce the final portrait.
I like monkeys because of their agility and seemingly erratic behaviors, and because it is my Chinese/Japanese zodiac sign. As for the octopus, I guess I kind of have a mild tentacle obsession, but not necessarily in the über-hentai way. I created tentacled creatures for my presentation in Red Burns’ Applications class last semester. Also, I like octopus because it tastes good.