Archive for the ‘Daily Art’ Category
More Art This Way »
Mood Ring
Thursday, February 9th, 2012
Mood Ring, abstract watercolor painting by Amy Crook, $323
More experiments with the awesome black paper this week. This paper is actually colored by a chemical reaction in the paper pulp when they manufacture it, so the velvety black color is completely lightfast. Possibly more so than the paint and inks I use, actually.
The deep purple paint nearly disappears into the paper, but the opaque red pulls it into visibility, and both colors dye the salt here and there. I think I did tint this salt with ink as well, but I’m having a hard time remembering. The end result had a very ’70s feel to it to me, hence the title. Yeah, I said hence.
Mood Ring, 5″x5″ watercolor and salt on paper, $323 framed, with free shipping.
Something about the middle ring in the group of 3 catches the light much more than the other rings, which you can see in the detail below.
Mood Ring, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Below you can see the purple and red paint bleeding into the salt in the circles down in the lower right. I also made an iPhone wallpaper of the three central circles, and am sneaking it in here for those who read all the words.
Mood Ring, detail 2, by Amy Crook
And this one actually does fit into a frame, so you can see it next to my iPhone (for scale only, sorry) below.
Mood Ring, framed art by Amy Crook, $323
Tags: black, for sale, purple, red, salt, watercolor
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »
Cthulhu & Spider’s Delight Necklaces with Polymath
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
Cthulhu Necklace, collaboration with Shannon Henry
They’re almost ready!
Shannon Henry of Polymath Design Lab has been working with me to create a pair of awesome laser-cut necklaces. Cthulhu is in hand-dyed green leather, and the spiderweb (below) is made of black acrylic. We’re taking pre-orders for the first run, which will ship in March.
Check out Cthulhu and Spider’s Delight on Etsy!
Spider's Delight necklace, collaboration with Shannon Henry
Tags: collaboration, cthulhu, etsy, necklace, polymath, shannon henry, spider, spiderweb, weeble
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange | No Comments »
Tentacle Deeps 25
Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
Tentacle Deeps 25, watercolor painting by Amy Crook, $222
Tentacle Tuesday is upon us once again! I decided to go old school with this next set and paint the wash in the middle of the paper, which gives a very interesting edge to work with. This wash started golden yellow at the bottom and faded up to lemony yellow, but I wanted to give it a bit more oomph, so I went in with a deep goldenrod fine-point Sharpie marker and drew tiny crosshatching in all the background areas. The marker nearly fades into the watercolor down near the base of the tentacles, but you can see the texture clearly in the upper areas.
There’s something soothing about doing these really tedious patterns sometimes, especially since I can do a tiny area for just a minute or two and then do something else (mmmminternets), and then go back to it, which cuts up the process into manageable bites. Otherwise, my wrists might never forgive me!
Tentacle Deeps 25, 5.25″x5″ watercolor and Sharpie marker on paper, $222 framed, with free shipping.
Since this one’s slightly larger than a standard frame I didn’t get a photo of it in its new home yet, but you can see the texture of paper, paint and marker in the cool depth-of-field photo that I can’t resist taking every single time.
Tentacle Deeps 25, detail, by Amy Crook, $222
Tags: for sale, hufflepuff, sharpie marker, tentacle deeps, tentacles, watercolor, yellow
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles, Things I'm a Fan Of | No Comments »
Distant Skies at Endgame in Oakland, CA
Monday, February 6th, 2012
Distant Skies, art by Amy Crook at Endgame in Oakland, CA
Did you miss the tentacles? Never fear, new art is here! Well, here at Endgame in Oakland, anyway. I decided to theme the show with skies, stars and moons, and so you can see there’s pieces ranging from last week’s Blue Moon to some of my earliest salt pieces like Aglow. It’s funny, it feels like I’ve been working on the salt technique for ages, but really it’s not quite been a year, so this is a good sampling of the things I’ve done over the past year.
As before, the art is upstairs in the open gaming area, and I’m there most Wednesday evenings playing boardgames with the guys, so feel free to stop in. Of course the room up there is open most of the time, so if you just want to take a peek when I’m not around to stare to you, feel free.
The salt paintings are just so much cooler in person, I want you all to see them, I admit it. There’s even one token non-salt watercolor, Mountains of Madness, just for variety. You can click the image above to get a better view of the 13 pieces included in the show.
Tags: endgame, moon, show, stars
Posted in Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Words Words Words | 2 Comments »
Tentanet
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Tentanet sketch by Amy Crook
Another Saturday, another tentacle monster sketch! This time it’s tentacles over the internet, a subject of which I am obviously quite fond.
Tags: coloring book, pen and ink, sketch
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books | No Comments »
Sunset Bees
Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Sunset Bees by Amy Crook, $59
Somehow, when I don’t know what to paint, bees keep coming to mind! I suppose they do figure in two things I love quite a bit, Winnie-the-Pooh and Sherlock Holmes. Who can forget “In Which We are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin”? And Holmes’ desire to retire to Sussex and keep bees is equally famous, though in the modern day I keep wanting to see him take up urban beekeeping instead and have box-hives on the roof.
This painting was a bit of an experiment with using watercolor ground to prime over the gesso on the canvas, and then using watercolors for the painting. The color tended to sink into the grooves and dry pale, which gives the sky a dreamy feeling of a sunset seen obliquely through the branches, and the bees flitting overhead.
Sunset Bees, 2.75″x2.75″ oil paint on canvas with 5″ wooden easel, $59 with free shipping.
Below you can see the painting tucked into a bookshelf with my Pooh and Piglet bank, though in this case it looks a bit like Pooh is protecting Piglet from a horror of bees. Hah.
Sunset Bees with easel, by Amy Crook, $59
Tags: bees, for sale, tiny painting, watercolor
Posted in Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Shop - Whimsical and Strange, Whimsical and Strange | No Comments »
Blue Moon
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Blue Moon by Amy Crook, $333
I chose soft blue pen and ink to pair with a rich, deep blue background, and then added salt in two different ways for texture. The brightest stars are the now-familiar salt pools, and there’s a scattering of dimmer ones formed by salt sprinkled onto the damp watercolor paint and brushed off once it dried. It was still too stark for me, so I went and found my tiny dot-card sample of interference blue and added haloes of half-there light around each salt pool and the moon, too, which you can barely see in the above scan, and better down in the detail shots below.
This piece, and a number of my other moons, stars and skies, is up at Endgame in Oakland, CA for my mini-show Distant Skies. You can visit them in person upstairs in their open gaming area, and even buy them, which supports both the artist and the venue!
Blue Moon, 7″x5″ mixed media on paper, $333 framed, with free shipping.
Blue Moon, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Above you can see three of the salt pools up close and personal, light glinting off their facets and a faint shadow of the interference blue. Below, the shimmer’s caught the light and you can see the brushed haloes around each large object, as well as the little starbursts of texture in the background of the deep blue sky.
Blue Moon, detail 2, by Amy Crook
And of course I took a photo of it framed, once I had it all ready for the show. In the sunlight, the background looks less black, though it’s still velvety-matte against the shimmering, sparkling stars and moon.
Blue Moon, framed watercolor by Amy Crook, $333
Tags: blue, for sale, iridescent, moon, pen and ink, salt, spirals, watercolor
Posted in Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books, Shop - Flowers, Trees and Landscapes | 1 Comment »
More Art This Way »
