Stork Family
Posted on May 16th, 2011
Stork Family by Amy Crook
When Maribeth Doerr decided to get her website done with Wendy Cholbi’s Bonanza Package, she got not only her cartoon, but a custom header. We talked a little about what images would work for StorkNet Family, and decided to go away from the classic “stork with a bundle” clip art and do something classier. I went looking for photos of baby storks, and found a great one of a mama stork standing protectively over her two babies. I translated that into a nest and just mama’s legs, with three babies for visual balance. From the sketch I did two versions, and this watercolor was the one we both ended up preferring.
Her header, miniaturized below, continues the watercolor feel with a wash of blue across the top of the page. For the site itself we stuck to complementary colors sampled from the header, a nice baby-blanket peach and blue framing the clean white pages.
Categories: Completed Commissions, Daily Art
Tags: all rights reserved, commission, nfs, watercolor
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Whiteboard Tentacles
Posted on May 14th, 2011
Whiteboard Tentacles by Amy Crook
Bonus tentacles for Saturday!
I got tired of my whiteboard and wanted a clean slate, so I took some proper Windex and washed away all the to-do lists and inspired ideas and good intentions and gave myself a clean slate.
Then came the tentacles.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Tentacles
Tags: nfs, tentacles, whiteboard
Poddleston
Posted on May 13th, 2011
Poddleston by Amy Crook
It’s Friday the 13th, so I thought I’d celebrate with a cartoon of my very own black cat. This doesn’t really look like him per se, but it shares some important features — big ears, wacky tail, and smirky face. His real name is Pod (short for Pteropodidae, the family name for fruit bats), but Poddleston is one of the many nicknames he goes by. I scribbled this up with Sharpie marker, while the real Pod was off somewhere making trouble.
Or napping. Champion nappers, my cats. They could totally nap for nationals.
Categories: Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: cat, nfs, pod, sharpie
3 Comments »
Innocent Stars
Posted on May 12th, 2011
Innocent Stars by Amy Crook
This piece started out as an experiment to see how the three different pens — blue, green and purple — would fare when wetted with the salt-and-water technique I used for Water Lilies 1. As you can see, the blue hardly bled into the salt at all, the purple let out some pink but stayed largely unblurred, and the green dissolved almost completely. I let it sit for a while on my bookshelf while I pondered what to do next, and eventually I decided that the swirling bright spots reminded me a bit of bright stars.
I mixed up a dark purple-blue-black and layered it into the background in messy, childlike strokes. Then I scattered some smaller salt granules over the wet paint and let it form another, softer set of stars as it dried.
Innocent Stars, 7″x5″ salt, watercolor and pen and ink on watercolor paper, $222 framed with free shipping.
The piece is framed and hanging out in my living room at the moment, just waiting to find a new home.
Innocent Stars, framed, by Amy Crook
Below you can see a couple of close-up details of the salt-and-ink “stars.” My camera was having trouble with the colors, though, so the first one is much more accurate than the second.
Innocent Stars, detail, by Amy Crook
Innocent Stars, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: for sale, framed, night, pen and ink, purple, salt, sky, stars, watercolor
2 Comments »
Weeble Wednesday: Maribeth Doerr
Posted on May 11th, 2011
Maribeth Doerr cartoon by Amy Crook
I actually finished Maribeth’s cartoon months ago, and just haven’t gotten around to posting it, oops.
She got her cartoon as part of with her WordPress Bonanza Package with me & Wendy Cholbi — I’ll be posting her header art next week. I had a lot of fun drawing her weeble self, the warm grin and giant pink bag, along with her very appropriate “Delightfully Silly” t-shirt. I always enjoy drawing ponytails, too, I think it’s the same urge that makes me draw dozens of spirally swishy tentacles.
Categories: Completed Commissions, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces
Tags: all rights reserved, cartoon, copic marker, nfs, pen and ink, weeble
Tentacle Deeps 11
Posted on May 10th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 11 by Amy Crook
I tried something a little different with today’s tentacles, and I think the results are really interesting.
The background was a wash of periwinkle gouache with large already-paint-stained salt crystals set int the wet paint and left to dry. The resulting spots seemed to me like excellent starting points for some tentacles, so it looks like they’re each emerging from their own interdimensional portal. I went for a lighter color of tentacles, a deep green instead of the opaque black or blue-black I usually use, giving the whole thing a sense less of depths than heights.
Tentacle Deeps 11, 5″x7″ watercolor and salt on watercolor paper.
Below you can see a close-up of the way the paint and salt reacted to each other, and the way they layered when a tentacle was painted over one of the salt “portals.”
Tentacle Deeps 11, detail, by Amy Crook
And here you can see it in its lovely new frame:
Tentacle Deeps 11, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: for sale, periwinkle, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Water Lilies 2
Posted on May 9th, 2011
Water Lilies 2 by Amy Crook
This is currently sitting in a frame on my bookshelf next to Water Lilies 1, and the two of them catch the morning sun beautifully. The salt “flowers” have a soft sparkle to them that really draws the eye to their three-dimensional shapes. I especially like the way the electric blue spirals dissolve into a soft but very clear cyan that tints the salt crystals.
The nerd in me also likes that the lily pads came out with a very Pac-Man
Water Lilies 2, 7″x5″ watercolor and salt on watercolor paper, $199 framed with free shipping.
Water Lilies 1 & Water Lilies 2, framed, by Amy Crook
Water Lilies 2, detail, by Amy Crook
Water Lilies 2, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, framed, salt, watercolor
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