Okno on a Brown Dwarf
Afra Ashraf
medium: watercolor
medium: watercolor
This watercolor was inspired by the soon to be published novel, Harold and Okno, by Janani Balasubramanian, an artist-in-residence with the Brown Dwarfs in New York City research group. I wanted to paint Okno, who is an octopus living on a brown dwarf. Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects between planets and stars, and despite the name, they are not quite brown, but reddish in color. In the background of the painting, there is a comet and a spiral galaxy (not drawn to scale).
Summary of Harold and Okno by Janani Balasubramanian: Harold and Okno is a a Cold War-era novel about the extraordinary friendship between an octopus (with an alien origin story) and a CIA psychic. It is an exchange between someone who is dying and someone who wants to die. I'm an undergrad astrophysics major at Barnard studying brown dwarfs (or failed stars) with the Brown Dwarfs of NYC research group at the American Museum of Natural History. I love cosmology, watercolor, and mischief!
Twitter: @afrashraf |