Archive for the ‘Daily Art’ Category
Tentacle Deeps 36
Tuesday, May 29th, 2012
Tentacle Deeps 36 by Amy Crook
This week’s art is all full of color, and the tentacles are no exception! A soft, granular periwinkle background plays host to rich teal tentacles, seven of which reach up for whatever mysterious light shines down from above. All this rich color is hard to represent online, but I do what I can to be as accurate as possible, at least on my monitor.
It’s hard to believe I’ve painted three dozen of these, but the proof is in the tag. I have a few more planned yet before I give up the series, so don’t fear for Tentacle Tuesday just yet.
Tentacle Deeps 36, 6″x6″ watercolor on paper.
Tentacle Deeps 36, detail, by Amy Crook
Above you can see my tradition tentacles-up detail photo. Below, I’ve temporarily tucked them into an 8″x10″ desk frame for photographing, with my iPhone for reference. If you’re wondering where the sticker went, it’s a whole new phone – the old one had an in-warranty mechanical issue, and so I have a brand new one in its place. New sticker soon, this time with Jellyfish!
Tentacle Deeps 36, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: nfs, periwinkle, teal, tentacle deeps, tentacles
Flow
Monday, May 28th, 2012
Flow, abstract art by Amy Crook
This holiday Monday brings a piece that’s ironically about work, and getting into the flow of things. I actually painted the background for this upside-down, but I decided I liked the way it looked better the other way around once I got in the flow of working on it.
It reminds me a little of those desk toys with the two unmixing fluids that rock back and forth meditatively, creating waves where the two fluids meet. Something to put up at work to remind you that sometimes, all you have to do is look at things another way to get into the groove again.
Flow, 8″x4″ pen & ink and watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper.
Flow, detail, by Amy Crook
Above you can see some of the crosshatching up close, and the subtle variations in color and texture throughout the piece. Below, it’s been temporarily put in a 10″x8″ frame for scale. And now, by request, it’s also a computer wallpaper.
Flow, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers
Tags: blue, crosshatching, for sale, green, pen and ink, spirals, watercolor
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Ogre sketch
Sunday, 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
Saturday, 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
Friday, 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
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Sherlock Flock
Thursday, 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
Wednesday, 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
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