Marine Parade

This one came from drawing alongside kids.

Give a child an octopus to draw and they will not labour over the suckers or worry whether the arms bend correctly. They will get straight to what an octopus actually is: a round thing, some arms, a face that is clearly pleased about something. Done in thirty seconds, and somehow more like an octopus than a careful drawing would be.

I found that genuinely humbling. Adults add detail because we are anxious about being wrong. Children subtract it because they are only interested in the part that matters. Watching them take a complicated marine animal and reduce it to its happiest possible shape changed how I draw.

So Marine Parade is drawn their way. Simple creatures, bright and unfussy, marching along together. It is on the kids' pieces because that is where it belongs — but the simplicity is not a compromise for small people. It is the point.