red « Antemortem Arts | Fine Art & Custom Paintings

Posts Tagged ‘red’

Red Orange Yellow

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Red Orange Yellow by Amy Crook, $199

Another experiment with salt and watercolor, this time the salt picked up just a touch of the colour, turning the salt crystals a sort of transparent pale red that manages not to be very pink at all. I stuck to the warm, sunny end of the spectrum, with swooping zen circles of gold, complementary swishes of orange and just little hints of red creeping back in and blending into the orange at the edges.

I’ll frame it in an 8″x10″ frame with a mat, but right now I’m busy with a big website launch for a client (I can’t wait to show you the header painting!), so anything that needs matting is on the back burner — unless it sells, of course!

Red Orange Yellow, 4″x8″ watercolor and salt on paper, $199 framed, with free shipping.

Cold winter sunlight casts the paper in blue, but the warmth of the paint can’t be dampened in this detail photo.You can really see how the salt is tinged with red from this angle, too.

Red Orange Yellow, detail, by Amy Crook

If you think you’d like to brighten up your home or office with this piece but you’ve got questions, or if you’d just like to chat but don’t want to comment, feel free to drop me a line!

Tags: for sale, orange, red, salt, watercolor, yellow
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »

Tentacle Deeps 22

Tuesday, December 20th, 2011

Tentacle Deeps 22 by Amy Crook, $222

Some cheerful Christmas red tentacles for the Tuesday before! Well, all right, the shade’s a bit more bloody than Santa usually likes, but I’m not going to be the one to tell Cthulhu that.

I went with a very simple, stylized pattern on the tentacles this time, which makes them look a bit like monster fingers, creepy scratch marks, or perhaps long, wavy hair. The surface of the tentacles is subtly textured from the granulating Lunar Black watercolor, too, and it’s even more obvious in person.

Tentacle Deeps 22, 4″x8″ watercolor on paper, $222 framed, with free shipping.

Tags: for sale, red, 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 »

Zen Red Bird

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Zen Red Bird by Amy Crook, $89

I was enjoying the pure, rich red pigment of one of my red Japanese watercolors, and I decided to paint something simple and zen. I added in just a touch of black for the bright eye and dark beak to create a seasonal red bird, but I think the essence of the image is in that first red swoosh down the bird’s back. It makes a good reminder to keep it simple this holiday season, and not go flying right out of the frame trying to do too much.

Zen Red Bird, 6″x6″ watercolor on paper, $89 with free shipping.

Tags: for sale, red, watercolor, zen
Posted in Daily Art, Shop - Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Shop - Whimsical and Strange, Whimsical and Strange | 2 Comments »

Tentacle Deeps 20

Tuesday, November 29th, 2011

Tentacle Deeps 20 by Amy Crook, $222

Usually for these I paint the background and then put in the tentacles, but this time I decided to go about it the other way. The watercolor wash didn’t disturb the Sharpie in the foreground at all, though it did give the tentacles a distinct red tint, but it softened the grey pen-and-ink tentacles in the background so they look a bit more surreal.

I still need to properly frame this one because of the odd size, but rest assured, like all of the Tentacle Deeps series, this painting will ship framed to its future home.

Tentacle Deeps 20, 4″x8″ mixed media on paper, $222, framed, with free shipping.

Tags: black, brush pen, for sale, red, sharpie, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »

Tentacle Deeps 18

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Tentacle Deeps 18 by Amy Crook, $222

More tentacles! I started this piece with salt that had already been gently used and had a coating of color on the outside, arranging them in a pattern that made me think of balloons floating up or perhaps fluff blowing off a dandelion. Once I got the idea to attach them to tentacles, however, I couldn’t resist! I used several shades of red and orange ink to create the tentacles, and of course my scanner hates red dyes and so a lot of the subtle gradation you can see in person is lost.

I decided to create the “deeps” part of the painting with simple crosshatching, electing to go with a fairly loose style which often ran into the tentacles, which makes them just a bit more unreal. I do wonder what the salt pools represent in this context, attached at the end of each vivid red tentacle. Egg sacs? Sensory organs? Lunch?

Tentacle Deeps 18, 7″x5″ mixed media on paper, $222, framed, with free shipping.

Tentacle Deeps 18, framed art by Amy Crook

Tentacle Deeps 18, framed, by Amy Crook, $222

Tags: black, crosshatching, for sale, pen and ink, red, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »

Tentacle Deeps 16

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

Tentacle Deeps 16 by Amy Crook, $222

It’s Tuesday and that means tentacles! This is painted on a handmade postcard from India, just like Tentacle Deeps 12 & Tentacle Deeps 13.

I actually use the same two colors of paint for the wash on this as yesterday’s art, but the fade is much looser, and there’s no pure pigment, just different mixtures. When I went to put the tentacles on, it struck me that I hadn’t done a horizontal one yet, and so I used the granular lunar black watercolor to paint in these tentacles. The paint settled into the groovs in the paper, emphasizing the texture of the paper and letting the background color glow through the black as though the tentacles are strangely translucent.

Tentacle Deeps 16, ~4″x6″ watercolor on handmade paper, $222, framed, with free shipping.

I can’t resist taking these bottom-up shots whenever I’m photographing these tentacle pieces these days, even though there’s no salt at all on this one.

Tentacle Deeps 16, detail, by Amy Crook

Here we are, a photo of the framed piece with my iPhone providing scale.

Tentacle Deeps 16, framed art by Amy Crook

Tentacle Deeps 16, framed, by Amy Crook, $222

Tags: for sale, orange, red, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »

Tentacle Deeps 15

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

Tentacle Deeps 15 by Amy Crook, $666

Days of work went into today’s piece, but I think they’re my favorite tentacles yet. I used the same technique of softening pen-and-ink with water as in Tentacle Deeps 14, but then I went through and grew salt crystals along the body of each tentacle. The cross-hatching used three different pens to create the sense of light and depth, and my friend Eric L suggested that it looks like the tentacles are starting to dissolve where the light is hitting them.

Tentacle Deeps 15, 5″x7″ mixed media on paper, $666, framed, with free shipping.

Here you can see a closer view of the texture and the way I created the effect of light fading to darkness.

Tentacle Deeps 15, detail 1, by Amy Crook

I love how this shows off the variation in the tentacle colors, and the way the salt crystals sparkle even with the dark ink suffusing them.

Tentacle Deeps 15, detail 2, by Amy Crook

I finally had the brilliant idea of putting something in the framed shots so you’d get a sense of scale, so enjoy this shot of the tentacles in their frame, hanging out with my iPhone.