Curiosity
Thursday, May 5th, 2011
Curiosity by Amy Crook
My scanner can really take the sparkle out of anything, I think. This piece in real life is pure play — bright, cheery cyan with clusters of sparkling salt crystals, and even a single shining confetti star in the center of the “o” in curiosity.
I was experimenting once again with the various materials, salt and water, ink and paint, and by drawing my spirals in the still-wet paint I created these fascinating shapes. Then I put salt in the spirals and dripped more water over them, and it spread and pooled and dried in a glittering pattern. When it had dried, I thought the piece needed something, so I added the criss-cross stitching down the righthand side, and the word “curiosity” that seemed to fit so well with how the piece came to life.
Curiosity, 5″x7″ watercolor, salt, pen & ink and confetti star on watercolor paper.
You can get a better idea of the way the salt crystals look with this shot I took before it got its final touches:
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Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: blue, for sale, pen and ink, salt, spirals, watercolor
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3 Responses to “Curiosity”
I know what you mean about the scanner. I was making some work with fluorescent colors for a while, but I could not make the vibrancy come across no matter how much fiddling with scanner settings and post-filtering in photoshop I did. At least your close-up shot gets a little sense of the sparkle 🙂
I suppose RGB can only do so much when compared with the richness of the real world. My poor scanner has a hard time with some of the rich, pure pigments, too, in paint and markers. That’s why we still have art galleries! 😉