Posts Tagged ‘salt’
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Salt Bookmark 2
Monday, February 13th, 2012
Salt Bookmark 2
by Amy Crook
It’s bookmark week! Lately when I tear giant sheets of art paper down to the sizes I like to work in, I’ve been saving the blank scraps, and this week I have enough finished bookmarks to make a week of it. I tried to do at least one in each of the styles I’ve been using, so there’s quite a variety, and they’re all for sale and a bookmark-friendly price. I’m not going to put them in the main art shop, but you can always go look at the collection (plus my older couple of contributions) by going to the bookmark tag. I’ve priced these nice and low so that you can get your hands on an Amy Crook original without breaking the bank, and have a bit of art to carry with you, keeping your place safe and beautiful.
Each one of these is an original, one-of-a-kind work of art, and I decided to start the week off with a salt painting. Barely-green salt and two colors of green glitter gel pen give this piece a shimmer that’s really appealing. The salt crystals are small enough not to get crunched off or damage your book, though they might wear over time, the way these things do.
Salt Bookmark 2, 1″x5″ ink-dyed salt and glitter gel pen on black paper, nfs, sold.
Salt Bookmark 2, detail, by Amy Crook
Above you can see the contrast between the pen that’s mostly glitter, and the pen that’s a fine metallic ink, both in color and density. The salt and its halo both glimmer in the sunlight. Below, you can see its size compared to a standard hardcover book.
Salt Bookmark 2, with book, by Amy Crook
Tags: black paper, bookmark, crosshatching, gel pen, nfs, pen and ink, salt, sold
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art | No Comments »
Nebula
Friday, February 10th, 2012
Nebula, abstract watercolor painting by Amy Crook, $323
Despite being done in the same pair of sessions as yesterday’s art, this piece looks almost nothing like it. I used pink Himalayan sea salt instead of normal boring salt for the pools, and then two different kinds of iridescent paint that barely shows in the scan. The soft finger-smudged shapes in the background are what give this piece its name, plus my lifelong love of nerdy speculative fiction.
Nebula, 5″x5″ watercolor and salt on paper, $323 framed, with free shipping.
Nebula, detail 1, by Amy Crook
In the detail photos, you can really see the rich color that hides in the interference violet and duochrome cactus flower paint until the light strikes them just right. Above there’s a very geometric, sparse pool of salt surrounded by encroaching violet. Below, the biggest pool is almost liquid-looking still, with its more rock-like crystal formations.
Nebula, detail 2, by Amy Crook
This one, too, fit nicely in a simple black frame, where you can see a a bit more of the detail and the ghostly-pale lavender clouds like a far-away nebula against the blackness of space.
Nebula, framed art by Amy Crook, $323
Tags: black, for sale, iridescent, lavender, pink, salt, watercolor
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »
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 »
Blue Moon
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012
Blue Moon by Amy Crook
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.
Blue Moon, 7″x5″ mixed media on paper, nfs.
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
Tags: blue, iridescent, moon, nfs, pen and ink, salt, sold, spirals, watercolor
Posted in Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books | 1 Comment »
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 »
Ultramarine
Friday, January 20th, 2012
Ultramarine by Amy Crook, $299
I’ve been wanting something other than plain white for backgrounds on the salt pieces just for contrast, so this time I painted the paper with a very light yellow wash and added in some slightly darker spirals to the mix. This whole piece is really about spirals, from the little watercolor stick spirals that didn’t dissolve even a tiny bit into the salt, to the big ones around the pools. It gets its name from the shade of blue, of course, ultramarine both inside and outside the salt pools.
Ultramarine, 6″x6″ watercolor and salt on paper, $299 framed, with free shipping.
In the same way that my scanner likes to think white paper is really blue, my camera often splashes them with red, so I’d say the real color is somewhere in between the detail below and the scan above. Oh, technology.
Ultramarine, detail, by Amy Crook
Tags: blue, for sale, salt, watercolor, yellow
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »
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