rowanmakesart

[rowanmakesart]

The thumbnails for my submission to Iron Circus Comic’s “You Died” Anthology. A story near and dear to my heart, I’m really hoping for the best!

(I also realized, a continuation of my exploration on the ideas around narrative. I’m nothing, if not consistent. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

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They said dress for the job you want not the job you have so I guess I never really gave up my dream if being a Pokémon trainer.

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I spent most of my day doing this and it doesn’t look like a whole lot yet but let me tell you my wrist has other feelings on that, haha.

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I have so many cute gym outfits u don’t even K N O W.

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Cute workout outfit, trying to get back into drawing for the sake of it.

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Open Letters, 2016

This is probably the most labour intensive and emotionally personal artwork I have ever made. From start to finish it took me eight months to complete--my entire final year of university--to create ten hardbound book works in a combination of intaglio and silkscreen print. 

This, for me, was the culmination of all my previous work in implied narrative. For me, there is intensely personal meaning behind each of the images, but I didn’t want to tell the story behind them; I wanted my audience to take from it what they would. I think that when I talk about what these images reference personally, concretely, it takes the narrative from the reader back to myself.

That’s not what I wanted. The final product is something you can pick up, touch, run your hands over, have a connection with. The art isn’t alive without a person holding it. What I love most about this work is what it seems to bring out in other people, what they take away from it.

The burnout from creating this work and using the process to work through what I was dealing with at the time caused some of the most intensive artistic burnout I have ever experienced. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t contributing to my lack of art now, almost two years later. But my goal this year is to make more art, even if it’s just in tiny pieces over time. I also feel like I can finally post this without personal reservations, which is a good feeling. A feeling like my life is moving beyond where I was when I was making this.

Happy New Year.

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I haven't really had time to do digital art recently (since I'm now working full time! Hooray!) But I've started cross stitching as a way relax. So I made these and turned them into teeny tiny iron-on patches!! I LOVE THEM. THEY'RE SO CUTE. Hopefully art soon, but for now, please enjoy my tribute to Mario.

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Teaching my friend how to use Photoshop and I drew a cat girl as a demo. My 12 year old self would be so proud of how anime this is.

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(Happy Halloween! Have some more song covers! 🎃👻🍬)

Song artwork #3 for Del! I love this I love this I love this. This one was a tricky one to get right but I think it really paid off in the end, and was a great challenge for me personally. Check out the song here, this song is FIRE guys: https://soundcloud.com/delgotgame.

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The second artwork I did for Del; I have a couple more in the bag now too which I am beyond excited to share when I can!! Check out his music here:  https://soundcloud.com/delgotgame.

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Unfortunately not much other new work, I got a job recently, (hooray!) but it also means that the next few weeks are going to be an adjustment period and there won’t be much personal stuff form me for a while. I have a backlog of stuff I have prepped though so you’ll still be seeing stuff from me!!

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(Life got crazy again in the not great way so have something else from the drafts folder! Things will hopefully be better next week. :) )

Weirdo, 2013

Another self portrait, done is watercolour and various inks. It’s kinda old now but I still love it with all my heart. The idea behind it was that no matter how hard I tried, the fact that I’m just kind of a weirdo was always abundantly obvious, so i decided to get a little cheeky with it. 

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I took another whack at “””””””””painting”””””””””””” this drawing but whatever, I think it turned out kinda nifty anyway.

Also for funskies, a self portrait I did in 2009 (grade.... 10? early 11?) for comparison. 

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(Fallen a little behind on my improvement challenge due to this cold, but I’ve been working for the last couple months on some other cool things so I’m still keeping busy! :) )

You know what’s really cool? Making art for some real cool music. Working with Del was an absolute delight, and you should absolutely check out his track Don’t Tell here.

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Improvement Challenge Day 6: draw a character from a character generator. Couldn’t pick so the dude picked one for me and he gave me:  The friendly alien who is a gossip and who is the result of an illegal scientific experiment. I looked up a bunch of weird animals and went to town, then tried to figure out what they would wear if they had to try and fit themselves into something resembling human clothing. They really like gym pants and wool shawls. (I love them, best character I’ve ever designed, they love texting and yoga. They walk on two legs, run of four and actually are really good at gardening but really bad at needlepoint. They wish the guy’s who designed them had given their second arms thumbs.)

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Improvement Challenge Day 5: draw 20 more figures. I tried to do silhouettes but they sucked so I mostly did gesture. You’re getting two days today because I have a wicked cold and I tried taking yesterday off to get better but that didn’t work so fuck that I’m doing all the art today cold be damned. Figures from Sketch Daily.

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Improvement Challenge Day 4: Draw 20 of a part of the human anatomy you suck at, 5 must be skeletal/muscular. GOD THIS TOOK SO LONG. Also trying to find interesting foot poses is reallt hard, also i only did 5 skeletons ones because HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE FEET? wHAT are feet. How do humans walk. Oh my god. My hand is literally cramping this took me 5 hours.

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Improvement Challenge Day 3: Draw a figure in action. More painting! There are parts of this that i’m REALLY IN LOVE WITH like the left thigh and arm, WEH. Motivation AHOY.

Reference is from Sketch Daily