We recently took deliv­ery of some post­card sized prints of some of my digital work, so I thought I’d share them with you.

Click through for more/bigger pics at Etsy

As you can prob­ably tell, the focus is on some of our favour­ite under­sea creatures. But why do I find these creatures so fas­cin­at­ing? Some thoughts below.

Well, the thing that unites them, I sup­pose, is how unearthly they look.

The star­fish: a piece of geo­metry given life; in a world of bilat­eral sym­met­ric­al­ity, he’s chosen to hew his five­fold path.

The lob­ster: like some strange futur­ist tank, with claws like a 50’s robot. Add in the bug eyes and antenna, and it’s clear that this is a creature that would be crush­ing coastal cit­ies and send­ing human­ity flee­ing, were it not for a mere acci­dent of size.

Seahorses: utterly strange, tiny and detailed forms, almost fractal. They look like cal­li­graphy to me, arcane glyphs, a beau­ti­ful but mys­ter­i­ous script.

And finally, the Nautilus: ancient and sol­emn, it’s hard not to think of them as car­ry­ing great and alien wis­dom with them as they float serenely from pre­his­tory to the present.

If these were made-up creatures we might not believe in them. But they’re real, and they’re a liv­ing reminder that the world is beau­ti­ful and strange.