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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, 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, 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.
Tentacle Deeps 15, framed, by Amy Crook, $666
Tags: brush and ink, crosshatching, for sale, orange, pen and ink, red, salt, tentacle deeps
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | 2 Comments »
Red Irony
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011
Red Irony, front cover, by Amy Crook
I have a few of these little folded over pieces of thick, stiff watercolor paper just waiting for me to find something to do with them. This first one had its front painted weeks before the last of its inside panels got their decorations.
When you unfold the first panel of the little square, you get a different Zen circle and surprise tentacles:
Red Irony, detail, by Amy Crook
The inner circle is smaller and a little more broken, and the tentacles seem to be reaching for it, toward some mysterious end.
When you open it further you find that the tentacles are now reaching for a mysterious blue-black circle of paint, accompanied by an appropriate Lovecraft quote.
Red Irony, inside panels, by Amy Crook
From even the greatest of horrors, irony is seldom absent.
-H.P. Lovecraft
The starting F has been decorated with twining red tentacles, this panel done with pen and ink in matching shades of blue-black and blood red, rather than watercolor like the rest of the piece.
Red Irony, 10″x4.25″ watercolor and pen and ink on watercolor paper, $399 with free shipping.
This piece is unframed, and really is more suited to standing snuggled up with old books where it can surprise the unwary, and hopefully make them smile at its odd message. The paper is quite stiff and the materials archival, so it should be able to withstand a bit of wear and tear, though I’d still keep it out of reach of little fingers.
For completion, here’s what the back of the piece looks like, though I may add a signature to the blank back panel before it gets slipped away into storage with the rest of my watercolor pieces.
Red Irony, outside panels, by Amy Crook
Tags: calligraphy, for sale, lovecraft, pen and ink, red, tentacles, watercolor, zen circle
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 »
Tentacle Deeps 10
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 10 by Amy Crook, $222
Tuesday is a great day for tentacles, don’t you think?
The rich, bloody red of this paint seemed to cry out for dark, velvety tentacles, so I did just two layers and then snuck in something new, a background effect with salt and an opaque yellow paint that created red salt crystals where it overlapped the background, and subtle white ones on the edges of a few of the tentacles. The extra detail seems to increase the feeling of eldritch horror, as though madness lies just around the corner if one could comprehend the meaning behind it all.
Tentacle Deeps 10, 5″x5″ watercolor and salt, $222, framed, with free shipping.
I’ve also made an iPhone wallpaper and computer wallpaper out of this one, as well, enjoy!
Tentacle Deeps 10, framed, by Amy Crook, $222
Tags: for sale, red, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »
Meteoric
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Meteoric by Amy Crook
This piece went through several incarnations and changes. My original red wash turned a peachy-orange that I wasn’t expecting when it dried with the salt, and the crater-like formations in the lower left needed something to balance them out. At first I tried adding another layer of salt craters, but that didn’t really help the imbalance, and so I ended up taking first the lighter red and then a dark burgundy pen and drawing in the lines, which tended to blur and spread whenever the pen passed over an area that had been densely soaked in salt water. Then I added one final wash of plain water in the corner, blurring and mixing the reds into a rather surprising fuchsia through which the lines can still be faintly seen.
Though the first incarnation had some accidental overtones with the pink salt spots in the center of soft peach circles, the final has a rather science fiction feel of a meteor shower streaking downward to further ravage the damaged orange surface of the planet below.
Meteoric, 5″x5″ watercolor and pen and ink on watercolor paper, $169 with free shipping.
Tags: for sale, fuchsia, orange, pen and ink, red, salt, watercolor
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »
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