5 Year Anniversary of 'Tentacles and Beaks of Cephalopods'

And that means time for an update! This piece is one of my favourites - it was inspired by my love for cephalopods, and in creating it 5 years ago, I was dreaming up methods to share my interest for them in a visually exciting way. One of the coolest things I always appreciated about cephalopods was that they had beaks - that's right, beaks! Just like the ones you see on birds! - but wanted to expand the narrative to encompass multiple species in this order. This is essentially what started a collaboration with the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Ontario, where I got to work alongside Dr. Sebastian Kvist and take a peek at their invertebrate collection for specimen samples. This kind of opportunity enabled me to get close up to some specimen, and was what helped capture the beautiful detail I've put in the tentacles.

Since I released this posted in 2015, it had a huge hit online - spawning over 25,000 notes on tumblr, over thousands of retweets and shares on Twitter, and even being posted and praised by Björk's leading artist on her creative team. What an honour!

For 2020, I wanted to revisit this piece and finally achieve something I didn't have time to complete back in 2015 - the diversity of cephalopod eyes. In this 2020 re-release, I included a new section about cephalopod eyes and how evolution has shaped them into different morphologies based on the species' needs. I think it's so interesting that nature can produce such a sophisticated eye in the Octopodae clan, but such a simplistic, rudimentary version in extant Nautilidae. Different strokes for different folks! Anyway, thank you to everyone who appreciates my work and for supporting "Tentacles and Beaks of Cephalopods". I am humbled that it has struck a chord with so many viewers and am so happy to release this poster as a glorified addendum to it's 2015 version.

If you'd like to support my work, please visit my webshop for prints and other associated merchandise :)