Archive for the ‘Floating Gallery’ Category
Spiral Dragon
Monday, October 7th, 2013
Spiral Dragon by Amy Crook
Red Sharpie scales cover the entire page, showing through and informing the shapes of everything above them.
Dragons are often identified by their colors. Red and blue make purple, make violet. This dragon has fire in his eyes and ice along his belly.
Is his breath hot or cold? Is that smoke or mist curling from his mouth? Do those spikes cauterize as they pierce, melt the strongest armor or chill it to shattering, or neither, merely sharp, merely tipped in shining red?
Seemingly endless spiral scales are there to protect him, but as Neil Gaiman says, “dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always.”
Spiral Dragon, 8″x8″ Sharpie marker, watercolor and iridescent watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper.
Spiral Dragon, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the sunlight reflecting off the iridescent sapphire of the dragon’s underbelly, and the way the red Sharpie spirals show through everything. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, just waiting for the perfect wall.
Spiral Dragon, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: blue, dragon, iridescent, nfs, purple, red, sharpie marker, sold, spiral, spirals, watercolor
A Series of Uncanny Fears: The Dark
Friday, October 4th, 2013
A Series of Uncanny Fears: The Dark
pen and ink art by Amy Crook
Those shapes you see in the dark, those are just shadows. Just reflections and illusions made up of your imagination and your eyes straining to make sense with very little light.
I’m sure there are no monsters lurking at the foot of your bed, no ghosts floating up near the ceiling, no faces peering in from the dark outside.
That scratching at the glass is getting louder, but it’s not necessarily from the dark. It could be the mirror. It could be inside your head.
You never really know, do you?
A Series of Uncanny Fears: The Dark, 5″x7″ pen & ink on paper.
A Series of Uncanny Fears: The Dark, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see some of the details hiding in the darkness. I especially like this pair of eyes, because they seem as distressed to be looking in at you as you are to be looking out at them. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, yet another pane of glass between you and the darkness.
A Series of Uncanny Fears: The Dark, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Series and Books, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: a series of uncanny fears, crosshatching, edward gorey, for sale, gorey, pen and ink, uncanny fears
A Series of Uncanny Fears: Your Shadow
Thursday, October 3rd, 2013
A Series of Uncanny Fears: Your Shadow
pen and ink art by Amy Crook
I’m not certain what my favorite thing about this piece is, but it’s risen to the top of A Series of Uncanny Fears for me. I love the Gorey-esque fur coat on the figure just passing out of the frame. I adore the wallpaper pattern you can see showing through the shadowy figure. And I think the overlong, many-jointed fingers of the shadow are delightfully creepy.
I’m sure your shadow doesn’t hunger to steal the life you live, to step into the light, to slip into your skin and live looking out of your eyes. There’s nothing to worry about at all.
You could make sure you always know where it is, just in case, though.
Just in case.
A Series of Uncanny Fears: Your Shadow, 5″x7″ pen & ink on paper.
A Series of Uncanny Fears: Your Shadow, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up shot of the wallpaper pattern both bare and hiding under the shadow. Below, you can see the piece happily ensconced in a frame, safe behind the glass. That sound you hear isn’t claws against the inside of the glass, I’m sure of it. After all, there’s so much glass in your home, you can’t really pinpoint where the sound is coming from.
A Series of Uncanny Fears: Your Shadow, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Series and Books, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: a series of uncanny fears, crosshatching, edward gorey, for sale, gorey, pen and ink, uncanny fears
Map to an Undiscovered Country
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013
Map to an Undiscovered Country by Amy Crook
I’m going to post a bit more about some of the pieces in October’s Floating Gallery for the next couple of weeks, starting with this one! If there’s a piece you’re curious about, feel free to ask.
This painting was directly inspired by a patron’s reaction to one of last month’s pieces. You know who you are, and thank you! It’s been a month of being fascinated with maps, for me, so this was a good way to explore that.
There’s two kinds of pen and ink on here, my teeny tiny Micron pen outlining the fjords and inlets around this strange country, and the thicker Japanese Pilot fountain pens in deep green and dark brown forming the inner details.
The line across the middle feels like a river and lake to me, but what if it’s a border, a fault, a plateau or crater? I love the mystery created by the map, making you wonder if the yellow is beaches or deserts or something else. Are those deep green spaces forests or mountains? If the brown aren’t roads, what are they? Are there even people in this undiscovered land, or are you the first to gaze upon it?
Map to an Undiscovered Country, 5″x7″ pen & ink and watercolor on Arches cover white paper.
Map to an Undiscovered Country, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up of the paper texture interacting with the media to create detail, the tiny hand-drawn borders making strange borders, the thicker lines intersecting and the edge of the shape in the center. Below, you can see it in the frame I got especially for this piece, though of course once it finds a new home I’ll be able to re-purpose this, should the frame not go with it.
Map to an Undiscovered Country, framed art by Amy Crook
I’ll end on a note about works in pen and ink. Most colored inks are made with dyes and are less lightfast than the pigments in paint. If you put your art somewhere that gets direct sunlight, it will fade like an old map despite the high quality art paper. So don’t do that.
Actually, don’t do that to any art, because even the most lightfast pigments degrade over time. Also, it’s just not nice.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: for sale, green, map, pen and ink, watercolor
September’s Works in Progress
Monday, September 16th, 2013
abstract watercolor work in progress by Amy Crook
The month’s halfway done and so is some of the art. Above there’s a piece that’s done in a similar style as Edges, in greens and golds. It feels very map-like to me, all the tiny intricate fjords that I outlined with my smallest Micron pen.
Below, there’s a piece that waited quite some time between start and finish. I kept working on it and stopping, waiting to see what it needed, until in the end I realized what it needed was a TARDIS.
Both these pieces will be available in October’s Floating Gallery. I do hope you’ll stop in and visit!
Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey, work in progress by Amy Crook
Categories: Floating Gallery, Works In Progress
The Floating Gallery: How to Buy my Art
Saturday, September 14th, 2013
So what is a Floating Gallery, you ask?
Well, Dear Reader, it’s an itinerant art show of a sort, a virtual pop-up shop of strange surprises. Bimonthly for barely more than a week, the gallery floats in and sets up, offering an assortment of art originals both rare and strange.
- The Floating Gallery is open from the 1st through 8th of every even month, approximately midnight to midnight Pacific time.
- Original artwork will be displayed in the Floating Gallery for those 8 days only, and each piece is one of a kind. Once the Gallery floats away, those pieces will not be for sale again.
- My Art Patron’s List gets a few days before the 1st to sneak in and get a preview of the Gallery, and buy before the general public sees it.
- You can buy art from the Floating Gallery either by using the buy buttons on the page, or arranging a payment plan with me, but you have to decide before the 8th.
- You’ll see the little airship in the sidebar to the right if the Floating Gallery is open. Just click on it to go view the show!
- Other than commissions, this is the only way to buy my original art if you want to take a piece home. If you’re new and want to see what sort of art I make, check out my Portfolio of recent works.
Questions? Email me! I’m always happy to talk to my Dear Readers and Future Patrons.
Categories: Floating Gallery
Tags: floating gallery, info
One day more…
Sunday, September 8th, 2013
The Floating Gallery will fly away in just a few more hours…
If there was any art you were hoping to sneak in and buy at the last minute, now is that minute! Email me if you’ve got any questions, or just go admire the pieces one last time before they’re gone.
Categories: Floating Gallery
« Or Head Back That Way
More Art This Way »
