Night Blooming
Posted on March 7th, 2014
Night Blooming by Amy Crook
Three flowers shine under the midnight sky full of silver stars or, as one person suggested, floating fireflies. The flowers change colors depending on the angle, pink to purple for the thistle, gold to green for the amaranth and gold to a richer orange-gold for the little wildflower down at the bottom, with the greenery going softly blue like moonlit leaves at some angles.
Gorgeous and ethereal, this painting makes the flowers seem ghostly as the bloom out of their normal cycle, bright against the blackness of the paper.
Night Blooming, 7″x5″ duochrome watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Night Blooming, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the thistle from two angles, purple-blue as it catches the sunlight on the left, and pink and green on the right under more normal lighting. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, with a few more eternally blooming flowers from my bookshelf for company.
Night Blooming, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
Tags: black paper, duochrome, iridescent, nfs, sold, watercolor
Red Wedding Decoration
Posted on March 6th, 2014
Red Wedding Decoration by Amy Crook
Some of the time when I’m working on abstract art, I’m just thinking about the visuals. Sometimes, like with this piece, I tell myself a little story while I’m working, so there’s this weird little mental narrative behind the art.
In this case, despite having never seen or read Game of Thrones, I’ve been made aware of the whole Red Wedding thing. When the garnet paint (made with real garnets!) looked so much like blood dripped onto the paper, it made me think of that show, which in turn gave me this idea of some poor scribe, tasked with turning the ruined parchment into a decoration. And he had better do a good job, since he obviously knows what happened to the last people that crossed Lord Frey.
Red Wedding Decoration, 7″x5″ watercolor on watercolor paper.
Red Wedding Decoration, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up of the painstakingly detailed filigree pattern radiating out from each splatter of paint. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, with the white circle emphasized by the way it intersects with the edge.
Red Wedding Decoration, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Series and Books, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: filigree, for sale, game of thrones, red, spirals, watercolor
Dragonfly Trio
Posted on March 5th, 2014
Dragonfly Trio by Amy Crook
Three filigree-winged, iridescent dragonflies flit across the matte surface of this gorgeous blue-purple background. A deep pond edged with fuchsias, perhaps, or a midnight puddle lit by Chinese lanterns. Their bodies and wings are painted with a duochrome paint that catches the sunlight, changing color depending on the angle just like the real thing.
Dragonfly Trio, 6″x4″ Japanese watercolor and duochrome watercolor on Arches cover white paper.
Dragonfly Trio, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can get a hint of the way the dragonfly seems to float above the surface of the other paint when it properly catches the light. Below, it’s in a frame, reflected darkly back at itself in my phone.
Dragonfly Trio, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Floating Gallery, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: blue, dragonfly, duochrome, iridescent, nfs, purple, sold, watercolor
Meet Me on Saturn
Posted on March 4th, 2014
Meet Me on Saturn, watercolor by Amy Crook
If you don’t know what movie I’m referencing here, get thee to Netflix* and watch Beetlejuice!
I decided I wanted to paint some stripey tentacles, so I got out my watercolors and popped in the DVD for inspiration. I decided on the off-color sky with its almost greenish blues and brighter golds after seeing the ghosts ending up on Saturn, and since that’s where the stripey sandworms come from, it seemed appropriate for a title.
I am especially pleased with the way the two outer tentacles are meeting up over the curl of the third. Are they parents and child, all part of the same creature, or is it just a third wheel?
The ways of tentacles are mysterious.
Meet Me on Saturn, 8″x8″ watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper.
Meet Me on Saturn, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the curl of tentacle, and the details of the delicate shading on and around it. Below, I’ve got the tentacles in a frame. They’re currently in my living room, where I can see them every day.
Meet Me on Saturn, framed art by Amy Crook
*Not that I have any idea if Netflix has it.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Tentacles, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: beetlejuice, for sale, stripes, tentacles, watercolor
Maleficent
Posted on March 3rd, 2014
Maleficent, abstract art by Amy Crook
Maleficent has a texture like layers of scales carved by the pen into the painted surface. The painstaking detail invites closer examination, especially in the different ways in which the paint mixed with the red ink to add an extra layer of color along with the surface finish.
This painting is named after the villain’s dragon form in the original Disney Sleeping Beauty, majestic and powerful but still, in her heart, flawed. You can see that flaw under the scales, almost the exact shape of the crack in the universe from Doctor Who.
Some of you followed along on Instagram during the week I spent working on this piece (hi!), so now you can see it in all its strange, obsessive glory. I keep wanting to run my finger over it, but I resist, because I don’t want to turn my fingers purple, or ruin the painting by accident.
Maleficent, 6″x4″ pen & ink and Japanese watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Maleficent, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up of the texture, and the furrows the pen made as it pressed into the painted surface. I had to re-draw some of the arcs half a dozen times to get the effect I wanted, because the pen was constantly getting clogged with paint it picked up from the paper. Below, you can see it in a frame with my phone. It’s wee! So wee, and so painstakingly detailed.
Maleficent, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: black paper, japanese watercolor, nfs, pen and ink, purple, sold, watercolor
Birthday Timey-Wimey
Posted on March 2nd, 2014
Birthday Timey-Wimey, a Doctor Who parody comic by Amy Crook
The tenth Doctor is happy to see that you’ve survived another year of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff. He’s got his usual hands-in-pockets deshabille going, with his mad hair to top it all off, and he’s got the TARDIS all warmed up for some birthday shenanigans.
You can get him on a card at my Etsy shop.
Birthday Timey-Wimey, 5″x7″ pen & ink and Copic marker on paper.
Doctor Who birthday card by Amy Crook on Etsy
Categories: Card Design, Floating Gallery, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: copic marker, doctor who, etsy, for sale, pen and ink
Studio Tour: Writing Desk
Posted on February 20th, 2014
The sunlit view from my bedroom doorway,
with my writing desk closed against feline intrusion.
I’ve been meaning to give you guys a little tour of my “studio” (aka apartment) for a while, and I decided today was the day to start. As you can see, I have a lot of shelves and paintings and plushies and action figures and oddities to show off.
Today’s bit of show-and-tell is an item you’ve seen a ton of if you follow my blog or my Etsy shop, the antique writing desk I use as the backdrop for all my photos. It’s quite compact and I’ve had it for 20 years now, through a number of moves, and now it’s finally found a bright spot between the window and the lamp, where it can get nice photos. To the right you can see my big plush dog, Neville, who is incredibly cuddly but I kept kicking out of bed (literally) and so got banished to guard some of my finished artwork.
Below, there’s a nice big close-up of the desk with the top down, which will be even more familiar.
the inside of my writing desk, including a lot of adorable photography props
You can see the green leather blotter that’s attached to the wood and makes such a great backdrop for white cards and various artworks. There’s a pair of holes that were drilled in the top at one time, I think perhaps for different suspension hardware, which I always take out with Photoshop because I find them kind of distracting. Secret flaws, hah.
I’ve got my fancy quill pen in its blue glass holder along with the photogenic bottle of blank ink, with some random papers behind it including all the Playbills for everything I’ve seen on Broadway (which isn’t many). There’s mostly random papers hiding in the desk like blank envelopes and a few extra cards, and you can see my hand-crocheted squid & octopus next to my pink plush squid from Japan. There’s even a little “present” made of a Moo card box with a bow on it that I use for photographing gift tags.
On top of the desk there’s a Halloween card a friend sent me ages ago, the pink kitty “stapler” from Japan (they like pink there idk), a Harry Potter cup of pens, a brass statue of Ganesha, my Winnie the Pooh nightlight, an orange Ikea pentapus, a mini-book on The Art of Love Letters, and a plush of May dressed as a Totoro, because cute.
Is there anything you see that I haven’t identified and you’re curious about? What do you have in your desk?
Greedy for more? You can join my list and get previews of upcoming paintings, comics, and cards.
Categories: Words Words Words
Tags: about, studio tour
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