Posts Tagged ‘yellow’
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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
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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
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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
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By Starlight
Thursday, January 5th, 2012
By Starlight by Amy Crook, $499
Another piece inspired by the iconic blue-gold-white of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, there’s a different textural feel to this one on every level, despite being similar in many ways to Midnight Blue. The paper is thicker and of a much softer texture, the salt pools are saturated with bright yellow paint but the spirals are still visible, and the ‘starlight’ is sharp-edged and fragmented instead of a soft glowing circle.
I really just like the feel of it, the swoop of bright stars across the deep blue sky, each one surrounded by its own halo of color.
By Starlight, 5″x5″ watercolor and salt on paper, $499, framed, with free shipping.
This piece is just a bit wider than square, so I’ll have to matte and frame it in a larger 8″x8″ frame when it ships.
By Starlight, detail 1, by Amy Crook
There hasn’t been a proper sunny day for photographing these salt pieces in a while, at least not one that’s warm enough to open the back door for the extra light that always makes them shine. Still, you can see the far pool catching a bit of light, as well as the rich texture the paint makes on the paper.
By Starlight, detail 2, by Amy Crook
Here you can see the tiny bit of spreading the salt did on the paper this time, not full snowflakes like some of the pieces I’ve done with this paper, but softened, creeping edges trying to expand beyond the water droplets’ original boundaries.
By Starlight, 5″x5″ watercolor and salt on paper, $499, framed, with free shipping.
If you’re interested in this piece and would like to talk, you can comment here or email me, my inbox is always open.
Tags: blue, for sale, salt, stars, watercolor, yellow
Posted in Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Shop - Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Things I'm a Fan Of | No Comments »
Lemon Heart
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
Lemon Heart by Amy Crook
This piece went through several incarnations before I got it to something I was happy with. The final product has a cheerfulness to it that goes well with the lemony yellow, enhanced by multiple layers of salt, watercolor, and pen and ink in two shades of green. The salt pool at the upper left formed a heart all by itself, so I couldn’t resist giving it an outline in the same grass-green ink as the spirals below, which tended to run and pool wherever there was enough salt left on the paper.
The bright new-leaf green of the spiral-textured section is done with a Pilot fountain pen from Japan, and the ink surprised me by being nearly obliterated when I dropped water onto it, unlike the black pen from that same line, which tended to blur but stay strong in Salt Cell 2.
Lemon Heart, 6″x4″ watercolor, salt and pen and ink on handmade watercolor postcard, $99 with free shipping.
You can see below how the salt made sparkly craters in some places on the surface of the piece, though this photo was taken before I was completely finished, and some of the texture has since been obliterated or changed.
Lemon Heart, detail, by Amy Crook
Tags: for sale, green, salt, watercolor, yellow
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Tentacle Deeps 9
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 9 by Amy Crook, $222
Once again, I bring you tentacles for Tuesday!
This watercolor piece uses double the salt or its effects. First I added rich texture and some orangey-gold color to the background with the large, coarse salt crystals. Later I used smaller Kosher salt on the tentacles themselves, putting the salt on after painting each one to get the maximum effect.
Something about this background made me want paler tentacles, so there’s less layers as a result. The salt texture is more dramatically visible, making the tentacles look as though they’ve got barnacles attached from years under the deep oceans.
Tentacle Deeps 9, 4″x6″ 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 9, framed, by Amy Crook, $222
Tags: for sale, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor, yellow
Posted in Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Shop - Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Tentacles | No Comments »
Burning Planet
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Burning Planet by Amy Crook
A circle is such a simple form, and yet I feel like I could find an infinite variation in them. This one, too, looks the surface of a planet to me, or maybe some alien sun, the swirls of almost neon yellow marked by orange and red patterns.
This time I used my Windsor & Newton watercolors rather than the Japanese pigment inks, and it’s really interesting how the different media react differently to the addition of the salt. Rather than drying to a fine powder, each little spot of orange-red on the yellow paint is actually a salt crystal formed with the pigment-rich water as the salt on top dissolved, and then dried. If you look closely you can see the flat, squarish shapes of the salt crystals (click the image to enlarge). It even sparkles in the sunlight.
Burning Planet, 5″x5″ watercolor on watercolor paper, $169 with free shipping.
Here’s a terrible iPhone photo of the painting at an angle, so you can see the sun sparkling off the crystals:
Burning Planet, detail, by Amy Crook
Tags: for sale, orange, planet, salt, sun, watercolor, yellow
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