There's a monster in this beer! Can you spot it?

Name: Elise Speicher

Handle: @elisespeicher

You won't find happiness at the bottom of a pint glass, but try checking out the sides.

For months, French fashion and textile designer Elise Speicher has been doing just that as part of her "Beer Monsters" art project, sketching the friendly faces she sees in the suds, then sharing them on Instagram (@elisespeicher). Think of her process like a Rorschach test. One you can drink.

"For me, these monsters are poetic […] the way the foam appears on the glass," Speicher tells CBC Arts by e-mail. "I love to look at all the little bubbles. It makes drinking beer quite an exciting experience!"

Once her drink's finished, Speicher can begin a Beer Monster, first sketching its foamy outline in pencil, then bringing a grinning goblin or laughing whatsit to life with black pen.  

Fantasy is a favourite topic for Speicher. "I draw all sorts of creatures," she explains. But the Beer Monsters have become something special, and the artist remembers her first.

"I was having a beer with a guy [I met] on a dating app. The monster was really obvious," she says of the pint-sized party-crasher — who, as it happens, makes a great wing man. Two months later, on another date, Speicher says she noticed another Beer Monster in her glass. "I wanted to sort of impress this new Tinder date, I think. I had to show him the drawing so that he would see the same monster on the glass. I had a challenge!"

"Since then, I'm looking for monsters for my own pleasure," Speicher says, and she hopes to eventually take her drawings beyond Instagram, collecting them for an exhibition, or producing screen prints, for example.

"Each time I drink a beer I'm thinking about these monsters," she says. "For me, all this started with my love for beer and having a drink with friends and now it's like an obsession. I have a little family of beer monsters to increase with little brothers and sisters." 

"And I'm always looking for beers with a lot of foam potential."

Social media can be so much more than selfies and viral videos — it's increasingly becoming a scratch pad for emerging artists and other creative minds to show off their latest work. Artstagram curates the best visual talent on Instagram, helping bring a little more art into your daily feed.​