Archive for the ‘Abstract and Just Plain Weird’ Category
Moleskine Cahier: Limned
Monday, May 2nd, 2011
Limned, customized Moleskine Cahier journal by Amy Crook
I’ve had a little pile of these Moleskine Cahier journals sitting with my drawing supplies for weeks now, but haven’t been really inspired for what to do with them. I took one to bed with me to ponder one night when I was too wound up to sleep but tired of my usual workspaces, and after a while this idea came to mind. It’s very similar in form to another piece, Growth, but in this case the form itself is a negative space limned by a cluster of silver dots, rather than the painted circle in the first piece.
Limned, 3.5″x5.5″ silver Sharpie on Moleskine Cahier journal, $23 with free shipping.
Cahier Journals sport a heavy-duty black cardboard cover, with visible thread stitching on the spine. Inside each journal you’ll find acid-free paper pages and a spacious pocket for notes or clippings. Size: 3.5 x 5.5 in. (9 x 14 cm), 64 plain pages each, last 16 sheets detachable.
Because of the simplicity of the art on the front, I chose to sign & date this one on the back instead.
Limned, customized Moleskine, back, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Moleskines, Series and Books
Tags: black, for sale, moleskine, sharpie, silver
Zen Comma
Friday, April 29th, 2011
Zen Comma by Amy Crook
I painted the central “zen circle” swish of this piece and then let it sit for a while. It looked so much like a comma, and the blue-black watercolor was so stark against the white, it really needed some words to go with it. I debated on a quote, on writing something myself, on printing or handwriting, and eventually came up with this. It’s one of my favourite quotes from a book, the end of a longer piece about the way we integrate pain into our views of the world.
Zen Comma, 6″x4″ watercolor, brush pen and ink on watercolor postcard, $99 with free shipping.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: brush pen, don h debrandt, for sale, pen and ink, watercolor, zen circle
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Water Lilies 1
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Water Lilies 1, watercolor by Amy Crook
This whole piece was an experiment, but I’m really happy with the results. The electric blue ink of the pen I used originally dissolved completely in the drops of water that beaded up on the paper, and the rocks of salt I put in the center of each little spiral did as well. Then the water took a full day to dry, the salt crystallizing back out onto the paper to form the three-dimensional baby blue “flowers.” I went in afterward and painted in the lily pads around each flower, letting the paint smudge and dissolve a bit of the salt, giving the whole thing an impressionist, watery feeling.
I liked it so much I’ve framed it to put on my bookshelf, and started another, similar piece with more color.
Water Lilies 1, 7″x5″ pen & ink, watercolor, and salt on watercolor paper.
Water Lilies 1, progress 1, by Amy Crook
Above you can see the water beaded up, the blue ink swirling up into the drops, and the salt crystal hiding in the middle of each. Below, the result a day later, when the water had completely evaporated, leaving salt and ink in a new configuration.
Water Lilies 1, progress 2, by Amy Crook
Water Lilies 1, progress 3, by Amy Crook
Above you can see how the paper is gently warped, and the salt crystals rise up above it in robin’s egg blue and rich, watery green. Below, a shot of the piece in its frame, all ready to be hung on the wall, put on a bookshelf, or to decorate your desk.
Water Lilies 1, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books
Tags: blue, for sale, green, pen and ink, salt, watercolor
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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
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, green, salt, watercolor, yellow
Meteoric
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Meteoric by Amy Crook
This piece went through several incarnations and changes. My original red wash turned a peachy-orange that I wasn’t expecting when it dried with the salt, and the crater-like formations in the lower left needed something to balance them out. At first I tried adding another layer of salt craters, but that didn’t really help the imbalance, and so I ended up taking first the lighter red and then a dark burgundy pen and drawing in the lines, which tended to blur and spread whenever the pen passed over an area that had been densely soaked in salt water. Then I added one final wash of plain water in the corner, blurring and mixing the reds into a rather surprising fuchsia through which the lines can still be faintly seen.
Though the first incarnation had some accidental overtones with the pink salt spots in the center of soft peach circles, the final has a rather science fiction feel of a meteor shower streaking downward to further ravage the damaged orange surface of the planet below.
Meteoric, 5″x5″ watercolor and pen and ink on watercolor paper, $169 with free shipping.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, fuchsia, orange, pen and ink, red, salt, watercolor
Burning Planet
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Burning Planet by Amy Crook, $169
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″ salt and watercolor on watercolor paper.
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
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, orange, planet, salt, sun, watercolor, yellow
Tentacle Planet
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
Tentacle Planet by Amy Crook
I guess I’ve just had tentacles on the brain lately! The first day I was experimenting with salt, I painted up the central circle of opaque gouache, which ended up looking a bit like Mars to me when it dried. The salt makes the pigments powder on the page, and you can see a little smear of paint-dust in the upper left from where I brushed it away.
I wasn’t satisfied with just the one layer of paint, though, so I watered down the same pure pigment into a light wash and painted in the halo of tentacles, sprinkling salt carefully at the base of each one, which further affected the surface of the circle around the edges as well.
Tentacle Planet, 5″x5″ Japanese watercolor on Arches cover white paper.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Tentacles
Tags: brown, nfs, planet, salt, sold, tentacles, watercolor
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