Jarred Octopi - 3Muse Jar Challenge

I don't know what these two sinister octopi are up to, but it can't be good.

Don't ask me how we arrived here as I am not quite certain myself.

I started off with an image of a Victorian girl in a yellow floral field with a wide blue sky.  My intention was to give her a nice balloon, maybe a poodle head or an elephant head.  Harmless, easy fun.

After I cleaned up the black and white image and then painted in some pretty colors, I realized she wasn't right for my balloon girl so I saved the psd file and found another Victorian girl to walk my surreal balloons.

Three Muses posted a jar challenge last week so I opened up my older saved image to play with.  Sometimes I think we have a goal in mind and other times the very vaguest of ideas.

To begin with, I put her into a jar, thinking maybe Alice in Wonderland?  Maybe I should add a rabbit?  Then I thought that she could be one of many jars on a shelf....  I decided that instead she would going somewhere so I added a cart.  Where to go next?

I wasn't sure so I saved again and left the project for another day.

While scrolling through the huge piles of images I have on my pc, I noticed a particular vintage image of an octopus. ( If you follow me at all, you might notice that I seem to have a weakness for octopi.  There is just something so intriguingly alien about them).  I noticed that this particular octopus would be perfect for the top of the jar.

Now, I had a little girl in a jar, on a cart, with an octopus on top in the middle of a yellow floral field.  Clearly, the cart wasn't going anywhere and looked out of place in a floral meadow.

I changed out the ground to a more vintage cobblestone.  I added some columns to give it a sense of an urban landscape and decided that it needed a wall.  Finally, I realized that the octopus needed a sea to escape too and that the cart needed to be pulled by something so....

Here we are.

I really think that they are friendly octopi.  Really!  They are probably just bringing a misplaced child home to her family....

Steampunkopus - 3Muses Challenge

The challenge this week from the Three Muses was Steampunk.

When I think steampunk, my first thought is always octopus.  I realize that may 

just be me, but that is were my mind goes.

I started with a gorgeous vintage picture of a girl and her dog.  

I added color and did some damage control to the image.

Initially, I intended to add some goggles or some cogs but I really liked her as is.

I added a landscape from wikipedia commons and then went through my octopus and squid images.

What is it about about our underwater friends that sometimes has a purely alien look to them?

I had some tentacle fun and added some more water creature details into the sky.

To a purist, I may have missed the steampunk mark, but I liked 

my final result so here is my version of Steampunk Octopus.