Ogre sketch
Posted on May 27th, 2012
Ogre sketch by Amy Crook
Today’s sketch went into some nice person’s Cthulhu Coloring Book, or perhaps a Monster Heart one. It’s hard to remember sometimes. The Ogre was inspired by an episode of Grimm, one of the few shows I watch that wasn’t cancelled.
Happy Sunday!
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art
Tags: coloring book, nfs, pen and ink, sketch
Mother Hydra Weds Father Dagon
Posted on May 26th, 2012
Mother Hydra Weds Father Dagon, cartoon by Amy Crook
When I was done coloring this and Monday’s zombies, I realized that I’d managed to do only 2 drawings, but color 4 figures with 7 heads between them. Whew!
This one was also done specifically to be a card, this time to bring a little Cthulhu to your wedding season. Dagon is the big bad from Shadows Over Innsmouth, and while Lovecraft’s Hydra doesn’t get a lot of description, it was easy to adapt the classic many-headed monster of myth to this purpose. I especially enjoy the boutonniere pinned straight to Dagon’s chest.
Yeah, I’m a little morbid.
Mother Hydra Weds Father Dagon, 7″x5″ pen & ink and Copic markers on paper.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: cartoon, copic marker, cthulhu, dagon, etsy, for sale, hydra, pen and ink, weeble
Mario’s Cave
Posted on May 25th, 2012
Mario’s Cave by Amy Crook
This piece owes its origins firstly to my childhood spent playing Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo, and more recently to Steph of nerdJERK and Lawrence Yang, both of whom make awesome pop-culture-inspired art. I was feeling a bit down about this and that, and I’d had this abstract, cave-like background sitting around for a long time. I decided it was time to just do something silly to amuse myself, so I made the cave from whence the Mario mushrooms originate. There’s mostly blue Mini Mushrooms (they make Mario small) and red Power Ups (that make him big), but there’s a few sneaky purple Poison Mushrooms and a trio of green 1ups.
Mario’s Cave, 5″x7″ watercolor on paper.
I put it in its usual frame-with-iPhone shot so you can see just how tiny the shrooms are.
Mario’s Cave, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: mushroom, nfs, sold, super mario, tiny fandom, watercolor
1 Comment »
Sherlock Flock
Posted on May 24th, 2012
Sherlock Flock - from wallpaper to fabric by Amy Crook
If you’re a fan of Sherlock on the BBC and enjoy my Baker Street Tinies, then I have a fabric design for you — Sherlock Flock! I took the tiny-pen-rendered wallpaper from B is for Baker Street, interior, and used my mad Photoshop skillz to create a repeating pattern, then uploaded it to Spoonflower at rather a larger size than the original. You can put it on a skirt, pillow, purse or have a hanky made, whatever your heart desires!
Sherlock Flock, digital pattern for fabric, available at Spoonflower.
My sample swatch came and I may have made a squeaky noise at how cool it was to have and to hold. No idea what I’ll do with it, but here it is in silk crepe de chine:
Sherlock Flock, actual fabric from Spoonflower by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: crosshatching, fabric, scribble goth, sherlock, spoonflower
Think Small
Posted on May 23rd, 2012
Small Things, Great Love by Amy Crook
Mostly, I work small.
I make paintings as small as 2.75″ square, and the vast majority of my work in the past couple of years has been 5″x7″. Nothing that takes up much space on a bookshelf, let alone fills a whole wall.
I think life is in the details. There’s grand, sweeping panoramas and grand, sweeping gestures and big harry audacious goals, sure. But there’s as much beauty in a single leaf or flower petal, in paying for the person’s toll behind you, or in crossing an item off your to-do list as there is in the big things. People overlook it, just like the introverts get overlooked for the extroverts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you’ve got to set audacious goals, but in the long run the success or failure of the big things depends on crossing all the little ones off your list, one at a time.
I like the physicality of working small. Though my masseur and my eyesight might disagree, there’s something very satisfying to me about drawing Many Tiny Lines, or using the Smallest Brush Ever. It’s one of the reasons I love my salt paintings, because they’re filled with miniscule details that sort of make themselves, and then beg for me to add to them or work off them or just appreciate them.
It’s micro-chaos being turned into something beautiful.
This isn’t that thing about the butterfly in Asia making Tornadoes in the Midwest, either. Small things are just that, small, but it’s what they can do that interests me. The effect of one cheerful smile in a sea of frowns, of holding the door for someone with full hands, or inversely of shutting the door in their face and leaving them to flounder.
Putting something unexpectedly beautiful somewhere that you have to notice it makes it more of a surprise, makes the smile linger a little longer. I absolutely adored the 365 Jars project, even though it never wrapped up, because it brought small, surprise art into so many people’s lives.
So, really, why small?
For all those reasons above. For practical reasons, because it’s easier to finish in time for daily posts, and it’s easier to store and ship and frame.
But most of all, because it works for me. The path from inspiration to art is smoother for me when I work small, because tiny work with details you have to peer at to discern just flows better than big, bold, and obvious most of the time.
Tentacle Deeps 32, detail 2, by Amy Crook
And yeah, I’m a lot like that with people, too.
Categories: Daily Art, Words Words Words
Tags: info, why
Tentacle Towel 2
Posted on May 22nd, 2012
Tentacle Towel 2 by Amy Crook
I’ve finally decorated another of my cotton floursack dish towels, and shockingly, it’s more tentacles! This time sinuous green with blue like waves in the background. I’ll put the lot up on Etsy eventually, but for now the only way to get them is to donate $25 or more to HALP PLS, my “buy the artist a computer that’s not about to die” fund.
These are an interesting challenge because I don’t really want to oversaturate the cloth with the ink (wasteful!), but it’s hard to do any kind of precision work on the wubbly surface (that’s totally a technical term). I suppose I could get an iron and stuff, but since the markers recommend machine wash cold and hang dry, no ironing, it seems silly.
I’ve started a third towel but it’s of the tiny masochistic crosshatching sort and entirely tentacle-free, so who knows when you’ll see it. I do vaguely plan to do a few that have cartoons on them, but you know me, I always have ideas for tentacles.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Tentacles
Tags: blue, dish towel, green, sharpie, sharpie marker
Zombie Dad Plays Catch
Posted on May 21st, 2012
Zombie Dad Plays Catch cartoon by Amy Crook
I didn’t manage anything specific for Mother’s Day this year, but I have two cards for geek dads on Father’s Day. The first one was my Harry Potter art from February, and now I’ve got zombies to round out the selection.
I made the zombie kid somewhat gender neutral, so anyone can feel good suggesting that their dad would still play catch with them even if they were both to become the brain-hungry undead. And if you use a head for catch, then it’s a game and a snack after!
Zombie Dad Plays Catch, 8″x5″ pen & ink and Copic markers on paper.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: cartoon, copic marker, dad, etsy, father's day, for sale, pen and ink, weeble, zombie
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