Thursday, May 12, 2011

PO$TER

I made this poster for my friend's band, called In The Audience, which is based back home in ye olde Portland, Maine!


I've never made a music event poster before. It was fun!

Although, I do still struggle a lot with digital painting. Hopefully it's not too apparent here. > _ >

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Inner Demon

Here's a sketch I did recently for my Monster class. The prompt was "inner demon".


I ended up scanning this and coloring it in Photoshop, but I'm not particularly happy with how it came out, so I'm not sure if I'll get around to putting it up here. Probably at some point I will. I don't have the file on my computer right now anyway though so it'll have to wait. :B

I loooooove animal skullssss

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Umbra

Here's some rough drawings of a character I've been drawin' for a year or two, named Umbra. He's a mischievous forest spirit! Part stag.


Should I give him antlers? He had antlers for a while, but they were hard to draw, especially next to his big ears, so I took them away.


Monday, April 4, 2011

Recent work!

I just got back from spring break! And what a nice spring break it was. Had an amazing birthday, took pictures of things, ate COPIOUS, COPIOUS amounts of food... It even snowed, like, eight inches on Friday, and I was totally cool with it because I didn't have to walk anywhere for once! It was just pretty.

Got basically nothing done though, which is scary. Still struggling to find an internship, and things are progressing painfully slowly. There's always a part of me that says, WHY DON'T YOU JUST GIVE UP AND GO BACK TO WORKING RETAIL FOR THE SUMMER. But alas, I know from experience that would be soul-crushing. SO. We keep plugging away.


Speaking of plugging away, I just got some new work from this semester photographed! I posted it on my portfolio site as well ( marikacowan.com ). Czech it out:

Self-portrait in oil. I've never painted my own face in profile before. It was fun!

Oil portrait of my good friend Dustin
"Beauty vs. Revulsion". Oil, beeswax, scratch technique

A (disproportionate) portrait of my favorite favorite favorite musician, the magical Sufjan Stevens. Oil.

$ketch

$$$$ketch

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

HHHHH IT'S MY BIRTHDAY and also some more sketches.

I'M 21!!!! CHYEEEEEAHHH

So that's really cool. 

On a different note, here's some sketches I did during an awesome Art History class I took last semester about Femmes Fatales. 


Back in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, it was common to think of women as being rather dangerous and untrustworthy creatures, as far as their supposed seductive/destructive powers went. Thus, there was a large fascination with Greek mythology involving dangerous female creatures, like Medusa, Sphinxes, and Nymphs.

That girl in the parka on the left has nothing to do with anything, really, she just happens to be on the same page as the nymph.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I GOT A NEW CAMERA SO THAT I COULD TAKE MORE PICTURES OF MY CAT

Well, no, that's not really the reason, but at this point it sure is shaping up to be.


My fantastic parents, for my birthday, bought me a new Nikon 3100, and I've been dicking around with it all afternoon. Since all I've really done is sit on my couch watching movies on my laptop with my cat sleeping next to me, I've mostly been testing it out on him. I love it so far!







Monday, March 28, 2011

BIRD PEOPLE

I have this weird obsession with bird-people lately. It stems partly, I think, from this class I'm taking right now, called "Birds in Books". It's taught by Mike Fink, a very old and pretty well-known English teacher here at RISD. He's got this obsession with birds, and basically decided to make a class about it. He's fascinated with the symbolism and folklore that is associated with birds, and he loves to tell what he calls "bird stories". The class really consists of little more than him standing up in front of all of us and just telling stories about birds, either drawn from his own experience, that of others he's spoken to, or from books he's read. It's pretty interesting (although, at times, a little difficult to take seriously... I hope Mike never reads this...) and during every "lecture" I find myself doodling in my sketchbook to keep myself from zoning out.


And, more often than not, I end up drawing these strange, goofy/creepy, anthropomorphic bird figures. Here's a few that I scanned a little while ago. There's more where that came from, though.

There's some mysterious symbols in the corner of this one... not sure what that was about.

Oh, and then there's another mopey little self-portrait that found its way onto this page too, on whatever morning I was drawing this in class. I sort of always feel that way when I have to wake up at 8:30 in the morning... it's simply too early for anything to exist.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Comic

A comic I drew a couple of months ago. More of this sort of thing to come in the future.






People tell me I draw myself in a way that makes me look like a man? I guess that's something I need to work on...








Also, on an unrelated note, I just finished watching The Social Network. It was better than I expected, actually. I'd heard from a few people that it was bad, so I didn't bother seeing it in theaters, but my parents rented it the other day, and I'm home on spring break so I had time to watch it with them. I thought the cinematography was surprisingly good, as was the score. It was a bit long, though... I found myself getting bored/impatient at the end. Also: Justin Timberlake. What. Was he doing in that movie.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Phirst Post

Made a blog! For my arts and things.


Here's some recent sketches to get things going. Did them while listening to "Jungles", by Stepdad. You can listen to that song here


That fluffy cat is my cat, Buster. I'm sure you'll be seeing/hearing about him quite a lot in the future. He's a funny, fuzzy dude.