spiral « Antemortem Arts | Fine Art & Custom Paintings

Posts Tagged ‘spiral’

Zoisite Swirls

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Zoisite Swirls by Amy Crook, $77

This piece is an echo of Hibiscus Green, but using the color palette from yesterday’s art. The mixture of the gold tones and zoisite texture gives it an illusion of being an iridescent bronze, even though the paint is actually quite matte. The zoisite is especially matte, soft and velvety looking on the paper’s surface.

Zoisite Swirls, 6.375″x4.25″ hibiscus tea on paper, $77 with free shipping.

Tags: celadon, crane and co, for sale, spiral, watercolor, zoisite
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird | No Comments »

Blood Moon

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Blood Moon by Amy Crook

Tonight I got out some watercolor paper and my paints and sat down to just play. I painted a number of washes for future use. This red-pink circle had dried just enough that, once the paints were put away, I sat with a red fountain pen and just started shading. Once I’d put in a small section of red on red, I started to see the moon shape forming, so I finished it up deliberately. Then, at the end, I took a darker red pen and put in the little spirals, over the places I’d dripped in a bit of blue-black when the wash was still wet.

I used a simpler texture than the one from my Texture Experiment 1, which let the work go faster and less precisely. In general, however, I’m finding a heretofore-unknown penchant for obsessive detail and crosshatching. I must be maturing; the last time I tried it with etching, I hated the fine, tedious work.

Blood Moon, 5″x5″ watercolor, pen and ink on reused watercolor paper, sold.

Tags: crosshatching, moon, nfs, pen and ink, spiral, watercolor
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange | 3 Comments »

Texture Experiment 1

Tuesday, February 8th, 2011

Texture Experiment 1 by Amy Crook

You can click most of the main images in my post to see them larger, and I really recommend it in this case — although the physical piece is quite small at 5″x5″, there’s a lot of detail packed into that small square.

A while ago I was working on some watercolors, and I played around making some shapes to use as a base for future drawings. I have a lot of small pieces of this thick, soft buff-coloured paper torn out from my printmaking days, and so I used one of those for this. You can see below a few in-progress shots that give you a better idea of what’s hiding under all that texture.

I was inspired by three things for this, first by Kirsty M. Hall’s tendency to draw abstract shapes and textures over already-done drawings and photographs, especially evident looking at some of the great pieces in her 365 Jars project. The second thing was a Jack Skellington drawing I saw earlier this week on Tumblr of all places, and while I love the image out of pure fangirl joy, I was fascinated by the rich textures in the background. On top of that, of course, I had found the process of doing my crosshatched hatbox quite meditative, so I tried to incorporate elements of all three things.

I’ve just bought a set of Micron pens, so I used the second-largest of those to do the black swirl, and then I used a turquoise Pilot fountain pen from Japan, whose ink bled gorgeously into the pale turquoise of the watercolor, adding an extra dimension of contrast between the two sections. Expect to see more of the Micron pens, which I’m a little bit in love with, though I don’t plan to give up my favorite brush pen — I can have pens on the side, it’s an open relationship.

Texture Experiment 1, 5″x5″ pen and ink and watercolor on watercolor paper, $99 with free shipping.

Below are some progress shots I took with my iPhone. Sorry about the quality, I was mostly just txting a friend for encouragement, and I decided to share!