Posts Tagged ‘for sale’
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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 | No Comments »
Tentacle Spiral 2
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Tentacle Spiral 2 by Amy Crook, $222
As predicted, I’ve got a second installment for my Tentacle Spiral series. This started out as something else, but once I looked at the smudgy, swirly green background I just knew it needed tentacles. I mixed up a very dark green that’s a little translucent, so you can see some of the other colors where the tentacles grow thin, as though they’re not quite fully in this world.
Tentacle Spiral 2, 8″x8″ watercolor on paper, $222 framed, with free shipping.
Tentacle Spiral 2, detail, by Amy Crook
These tentacle spiral pieces also look very cool when photographed at an angle like this, so much so I even made a wallpaper of this one. It’s been ages since I shared one, so I figured it was about time.
Tags: for sale, spirals, tentacle spiral, tentacles, watercolor
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »
Brown Curls
Friday, January 27th, 2012
Brown Curls by Amy Crook, $199
Today’s piece uses the pink Himalayan sea salt on a wash of golden yellow. Then I made little curls around each salt pool in two shades of brown, which reminded me a bit of tumbling locks of curling brown hair in the sunshine, with gems or perhaps droplets of water caught in them.
Brown Curls, 4″x8″ salt and watercolor on paper, $199 framed, with free shipping.
Brown Curls, detail, by Amy Crook
Above you can see the way the minerals in the pink salt settle out and add their own pigment to the painting, as well as getting a sense of the subtle sparkle the salt adds to the painting. I ship the salt paintings safely framed so that the three-dimensional crystal structures arrive in place and ready to display.
Tags: brown, for sale, salt, watercolor, yellow
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »
Copper Beeches
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Copper Beeches by Amy Crook, $323
This is one of those pieces that’s frustratingly difficult to color match or photograph in any reasonably representative way. The background is warm golds and orange-browns with layers of spirals in more browns and metallic copper. The salt pools are all centered over shiny copper spirals, though the salt itself didn’t pick up much color at all from either the background or the copper. There’s even a few golden leaves floating subtly through everything else, and that and the original Sherlock Holmes story are where the piece gets its name.
Copper Beeches, 8″x8″ salt and watercolor on paper, $323 framed with free shipping.
Copper Beeches, detail, by Amy Crook
Tags: brown, copper, for sale, gold, orange, salt, watercolor
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »
Tentacle Deeps 24
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
Tentacle Deeps 24 by Amy Crook, $222
It’s Tuesday the 24th, which is the perfect day for Tentacle Deeps 24, don’t you think? It’s a good thing I’ve got it all ready to go.
I have really been enjoying my block of 4″x8″ watercolor paper, especially for the tentacles, although it means I’ll need to figure out a framing and matting situation for them sooner or later. I like the sense of depth it gives them with the extra vertical space above, in this case where the yellows shine in and then filter down through the textured space into bluer greens at the bottom. The tentacles are scribbled in with fountain pen on the black and brush pen on the grey.
Tentacle Deeps 24, 4″x8″ pen and ink and watercolor on paper, $222 framed, with free shipping.
I have to admit, I think every single one of the Tentacle Deeps paintings looks cool photographed this way, so I will probably never stop adding in the gratuitous creepy detail shots.
Tentacle Deeps 24, detail, by Amy Crook
Tags: for sale, green, pen and ink, tentacle deeps, tentacles, watercolor
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »
Moon Valley
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
Moon Valley watercolor by Amy Crook, $299
I’ve been working for many months now on the re-launch of Moon Valley Astrologer, and it’s finally up, huzzah!
I used watercolors to create both the Moon Valley header art and the background of stars, though as you can see there was some Photoshop tomfoolery on her final header to make the moon more like a proper orange harvest moon. Not to mention the cropping and text!
Moon Valley Astrologer header by Amy Crook
This site was a huge undertaking, but I’m really happy that it’s all come together in time, and I look forward to continuing to work with Celeste as the site continues to grow. And of course my faithful code minion, Michael, who does the heavy lifting of implementing my designs with best practices.
The painting itself went through several practice versions, including the very creepy-sky study Mountains of Madness. This final has a peaceful, luminous quality that I think really goes well with her site and personality. Although it’s not really a portrait of the actual Moon Valley where she lives, it conveys the feeling we were hoping for in subtle, inviting colors that we then echoed into the rest of the site.
Moon Valley, 14″x8.5″ watercolor on paper, $299 with free shipping.
Tags: for sale, moon, moon valley astrologer, mountains, stars, watercolor
Posted in Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Shop - Flowers, Trees and Landscapes | No Comments »
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