Posts Tagged ‘pen and ink’
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Baker Street Tinies: B is for Baker Street, exterior
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
Baker Street Tinies: B is for Baker Street, exterior, drawing by Amy Crook
Today’s and tomorrow’s art are the newest in my Baker Street Tinies series, which combines the world of the recent Sherlock series from the BBC with the worlds and aesthetics of Edward Gorey.
Like the previous four, these were commissioned, so the originals are already sold and mailed off to their new owners. Nicole and Mo wanted to celebrate their own love and their love of Sherlock Holmes with tattoos, and so we created a unique Gorey-ish vision of 221b Baker Street for each of them. You can’t have the originals, but you can get the designs on greeting cards at Etsy!
This exterior shot is only somewhat faithful to the series — 221b itself has many of the features of Baker Street in the tv show, but the rest of the buildings are fanciful re-imaginings. You can see a shadow of a certain detective in the window of 221b, talking to the skull sitting atop a pile of books in the other window. Someone seems to have left their umbrella outside, but they can catch one of London’s famous black cabs if it rains. There’s even a binary joke hiding in the windows of the middle building.
My personal favorite is the fourth building, which just looks so very sad and shocked at what goes on in its neighborhood.
“Amy was an absolute pleasure to work with. She asked great questions to get at what we wanted out of the artwork, sent us drafts along the way, and worked with us to shape a final product that is absolutely stunning. She went above and beyond to see that the final product fit our needs, and we had a great experience all around.”
Tags: 221b baker street, baker street tinies, edward gorey, etsy, nfs, pen and ink, sherlock, sold
Posted in Completed Commissions, Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of | No Comments »
Green Sketch
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
Green Sketch by Amy Crook
Three shades of green pen and three of my favorite types of line work on a little page in my new sketchbook. I like the way the dark crosshatching fades to white, I’m going to have to use that in something, probably tentacles.
Happy Easter!
Tags: green, nfs, pen and ink, sketch
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art | No Comments »
Nap Attack
Saturday, April 7th, 2012
Nap Attack, Sherlock cartoon by Amy Crook
A friend asked for some cheer-up art of Sherlock fallen asleep over his experiments, and perhaps someone having covered him with a blanket. I couldn’t leave John out of the picture, so here he is mid-kindness.
Click the picture to see it bigger. I feel John is the one responsible for re-labeling Sherlock’s blow torch, and that at least one item in the array actually belongs to Mrs. Hudson. Oops.
Tags: cartoon, pen and ink, sherlock, watson
Posted in Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of | No Comments »
Spiral Islands
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Spiral Islands by Amy Crook, $333
This is actually the first piece I started with my salt-saturated solution, before adding the blue paint to the bottle. I was experimenting with the delivery, which is much less precise, trying to make spirals to go with the messy scribbled-pen spirals already on the page. You can see where they intersected, the salt water picked up the brown pigment from the black ink and left the rest behind, giving those pools an orange cast.
After I painted in the blue-black background, the whole thing reminded me of a cluster of islands in some turbulent ocean. I especially like how some of the salt spirals are nearly intact, while others are barely a suggestion of broken lines.
Spiral Islands, mixed media on paper, $333 framed, with free shipping.
Spiral Islands, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up of just one of the salt spirals and how it intersects with the ink spiral beneath it. The two separate pools got different amounts of ink infused into them, so the lower one is visibly orange while the upper curl is barely off white.
Below, I’ve taken a shot of the lay of the land, as it were, and this shining, mysterious little archipelago makes a great computer wallpaper.
Spiral Islands, detail 2, by Amy Crook
Once it’s safely tucked into its frame, it feels even more map-like to me. Here there be dragons, I guess?
Spiral Islands, framed art by Amy Crook, $333
Tags: black, blue, for sale, pen and ink, salt, watercolor
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | 1 Comment »
Harry Potter ink sketch
Sunday, April 1st, 2012
Harry Potter, ink sketch by Amy Crook
Another little sketch that went as a gift with some art. Harry always was fascinated with magic, and I like his expression, leaning back and admiring his Lumos.
Tags: Harry Potter, nfs, pen and ink, sketch
Posted in Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Things I'm a Fan Of | No Comments »
Grumpy Weeble for JoVE
Saturday, March 31st, 2012
Grumpy Weeble cartoon for Jo VanEvery, all rights reserved
The delightful Jo VanEvery wanted a cartoon — stat! — for a seminar she was doing. She wanted someone that looked a bit like one’s inner academic saying, “no!” to all the possibilities for one’s career and research. We decided on a weeble, and I sent her the colors you see above for a poster, and the inks (which I always scan before I color, in case of mishap), which they used for a coloring book page during the seminar.
She liked him so much, she’s getting a couple more, so expect to see a few more of her illustrations popping up in the coming weeks!
Tags: all rights reserved, cartoon, commission, copic markers, jo vanevery, nfs, pen and ink, weeble
Posted in Completed Commissions, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces | 2 Comments »
Quadrivium
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Quadrivium Supplies logo, art by Amy Crook, all rights reserved
My awesome friend Catherine has started up a brand-new company called Quadrivium Supplies, and I’m very pleased to have gotten to design her logo and product labels. She wanted a calligraphic Q of some kind, we went trolling the internet for ideas together. I drew the art quite small by hand with pen and ink and, as you can see, no ruler for the inking. I wanted it to have some rough edges the way a real woodcut would.
Even though the original art is only 2″ tall, I scanned it in Ridiculously High Resolution so she’d be able to use it on anything she liked. So far she’s using the small version the most, on her website, Twitter avatar, and labels. Irony.
I also drew her dingbats! They match the leaflike style of the decorations in her Q, and we used one of them on her labels. These are only 1/2″ tall in real life, but I made them big for the internets because I don’t hate you.
Quadrivium Supplies Banishing Ritual Oil label, design by Amy Crook, all rights reserved
“I started out with, ‘I want a logo. Maybe it should have a Q in it.’ And she got it narrowed down so fast by practically reading my mind and figuring out exactly what I wanted.”
Tags: all rights reserved, calligraphy, commission, logo, pen and ink
Posted in Completed Commissions, Daily Art | No Comments »
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