Archive for the ‘Flowers, Trees and Landscapes’ Category
Distance
Friday, June 6th, 2014
Distance, art by Amy Crook
Two paintings of crows this month, what is this world coming to? Obviously, I’ve had my blinds open to watch the birds outside my window. Pod appreciates this very much, though he doesn’t seem to understand that he’d be very sad if he actually could try to leap and catch one.
This time the crow and branches are sketched in with pen and ink, while the sunlit mist and distant castle are watercolor. It reminds me of the opening scene of some fairytale, an establishing shot waiting for us to swoop over the dead, misty forests and up to one of the towers to see who’s hiding in the castle.
Distance, 6″x4″ pen & ink and watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper.
Distance, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the crow and the mist-shrouded, distant castle, bracketed by dark, dead branches. Below, you can see the painting, sun-washed and petite next to my phone.
Distance, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books
Tags: crow, distance, nfs, pen and ink, sold, watercolor
Three Crows
Monday, June 2nd, 2014
Three Crows, watercolor by Amy Crook
Good things come in threes. One crow flapping, one crow diving, and the middle one gliding away on an updraft to avoid the swirling cloud. The sky has bright blue arching down and sunny yellow shining upward, but it’s the spiralling clouds in metallic silver that really make it beautiful. The silver paint shows up grey at some angles, shining white at others, and sometimes it blends right into the background so well it nearly vanishes.
Three Crows, 7″x5″ watercolor and metallic watercolor on paper.
Three Crows, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, a close-up of shimmering clouds and two of the three crows. I’m especially fond of the shape of the upper right cloud. Below, the piece in a frame, with my iPhone for scale.
Three Crows, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books
Tags: crow, metallic watercolor, nfs, sold, spirals, three crows, watercolor
Gestate, Uncurl, Blossom
Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
Gestate, Uncurl, Blossom; a calligraphic triptych by Amy Crook
Three small words and a simple illustration of a plant going from seed to flower in three panels. A metaphor for creating. A reminder of what it takes to get the beauty of a flower.
Gestate. The tiny green curled in the heart of brown seed.
Uncurl. The plant braves the world, straightens up, spreads its leaves wide.
Blossom. The beauty that can’t exist while the plant is still safe in its seed.
Gestate, Uncurl, Blossom, a triptych of watercolor artworks on 4″x6″ Fluid watercolor paper.
Gestate, Uncurl, Blossom; three details by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the three tiny watercolor illustrations up close: seed, curled-up sprout, and flower. Below, the trio in frames, lit by warm spring sunshine.
Gestate, Uncurl, Blossom; framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Words Words Words
Tags: calligraphy, for sale, triptych, watercolor
2 Comments »
Harbingers
Thursday, May 8th, 2014
Harbingers by Amy Crook
These crows are flying in ahead of the storm, lightning waiting silvery and shining in the dark clouds above, sunshine glowing off the white clouds in the foreground. They’re harbingers of the storm, bringing rain and darkness and sweeping change in behind them. Each crow is like a smudge on the horizon, that resolves itself into a flying bird when you look at it closely, black in the midst of the blue and violet of the sky.
Harbingers, 8″x4″ pen & ink, watercolor, and glitter gel pen on Fluid watercolor paper.
Harbingers by Amy Crook
Above, I’ve tilted the painting so that the glittering spirals catch the light, lightning limning the dark clouds. Below, you can see the painting in a temporary frame, a snippet of stormy sky like the smell of ozone on a hot day.
Harbingers by Amy Crook
Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books
Tags: clouds, crow, horizons, nfs, pen and ink, sold, spirals, watercolor
Blue Lilacs
Wednesday, May 7th, 2014
Blue Lilacs, abstract art by Amy Crook
If you sit in the shadows of lilac trees and look up at the sunny sky, the color can get washed away, turning the flowers into shadowy blues and purples, whiting out the edges of the leaves and making the sky seem like a bright, endless light. We had this row of lilac trees where I was growing up, and I had many adventures as a kid beneath them, imagining the tunnel between the rows as any number of fantastical places.
Blue Lilacs, 4″x6″ Primatek watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper.
Blue Lilacs, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see some of the subtle layering of desaturated blue and violet, framed by the brighter green with its sun-washed edges. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, like a tiny piece of summer you can have year-round.
Blue Lilacs, framed art by Amy Crook
Can you smell the lilacs?
Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
Tags: flowers, nfs, sold, watercolor
Blood Moon 5
Tuesday, May 6th, 2014
Blood Moon 5 by Amy Crook
Another Blood Moon made its way into my work queue this month, this time by adding some very subtle tentacles to an older painting in lieu of the previous image. This one is much more eerie than the last one, the bloody color leeching from the shadow to the white parts of the moon, and a second, smaller moon waiting off to one side, ruddy and strange. This sky is not our sky, or perhaps it is our sky many millennia hence, when the stars have become right and Great Cthulhu will rise up from R’lyeh to reclaim the planet for himself.
Blood Moon 5, 5″x7″ Japanese watercolor on Arches cover black paper.
Blood Moon 5, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can more clearly see the subtle mist and dark black tentacles rising up from the bottom of the painting, reaching toward the bloody moons. Below, the piece rests in a frame, a little window to some awful future*, or perhaps somewhere very far away indeed.
Blood Moon 5, framed art by Amy Crook
*Perhaps it’s Thundarr the Barbarian’s future, instead of Cthulhu’s. I always did like Ookla.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Tentacles
Tags: black paper, blood moon, for sale, japanese watercolor, moon, more cowbell, tentacles, watercolor
Blood Moon 4
Sunday, May 4th, 2014
Blood Moon 4 by Amy Crook
May the Fourth be with you! I chose a swirly, spiraled abstraction of a real-life space phenomenon today to go with the long time ago and far, far away that today brings to mind.
It’s a bright, warm afternoon when I’m writing this, and the cold hour standing outside when I saw the Blood Moon eclipse does seem rather long ago and far away. I spent almost an hour staring up at the sky, eyes fixed on the sliver of moon above through the haze of clouds that waxed and waned. I could only see Spica and Mars of all the bright objects, because I’m in the middle of a city in the middle of a lot of other cities, but I could see enough to be worth the chilled feet.
Blood Moon 4, 5″x5″ Japanese watercolor, duochrome watercolor, and glitter gel pen on Arches cover black paper.
Blood Moon 4, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the bright red and gold glitter shining atop the much more muted red-brown and white eclipsed moon. Below, you can see the piece in a frame with its shining mist.
Blood Moon 4, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
Tags: black paper, blood moon, duochrome, for sale, glitter gel pen, iridescent, iridescent watercolor, japanese watercolor, moon, watercolor
« Or Head Back That Way
More Art This Way »
