Archive for the ‘Series and Books’ Category
Weeble Wednesday: Mycroft Holmes & DI Lestrade
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
Mycroft Holmes and DI Lestrade by Amy Crook
I’ve been trying to give my weebles a little more life, so I took on the challenge of drawing Mycroft Holmes leaning smugly with his umbrella, and the put-upon Detective Inspector Lestrade, both from the 2009 BBC Sherlock.
I also made judicious use of photographic references, which I think really captures the features of these actors – it’s excellent practice for making clients into cartoons and vice versa. A year of working to put other people’s faces into cartoon form has really improved my grasp on what features add the most character.
Categories: Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: copic marker, lestrade, mycroft holmes, nfs, pen and ink, sherlock, sherlock bbc
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Tentacle Deeps 9
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 9 by Amy Crook
Once again, I bring you tentacles for Tuesday!
This watercolor piece uses double the salt for its effects. First I added rich texture and some orangey-gold color to the background with the large, coarse salt crystals. Later I used smaller Kosher salt on the tentacles themselves, putting the salt on after painting each one to get the maximum effect.
Something about this background made me want paler tentacles, so there’s less layers as a result. The salt texture is more dramatically visible, making the tentacles look as though they’ve got barnacles attached from years under the deep oceans.
Tentacle Deeps 9, 4″x6″ watercolor and salt.
I’ve also made an iPhone wallpaper and computer wallpaper out of this one, as well, enjoy!
Tentacle Deeps 9, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: for sale, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor, yellow
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Cthulhu Moleskine Volant
Monday, April 18th, 2011
Cthulhu Moleskine Volant customized by Amy Crook
The green of this Moleskine’s original cover just reminded me of the tentacles of an Elder God for some reason. Here he’s shown rising up over a field of silvery stars, or perhaps he’s slumbering with a blanket of the vast sky to keep him warm in the depths of R’lyeh.
Cthulhu, Moleskine Volant customized with oil paint Sharpie markers, nfs (sold).
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: cthulhu, etsy, moleskine, nfs, oil paint markers, sharpie, sold
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Weeble Wednesday: Sculpey Cthulhu
Wednesday, April 13th, 2011
Weeble Cthulhu, Cultists, and Extra Tentacles, sculptures by Amy Crook
Cthulhu has been summoned into this dimension! You can see that his otherwordly color confuses my digital camera into giving it white highlights, though in reality he’s quite matte in appearance. The cultists who summoned him seem to have gotten a bit more than they bargained for, as one’s in his grip and another got scooped up by his tentacled friends.
A friend of my commissioned Cthulhu for his girlfriend’s birthday, originally intending it as a cake topper. Unfortunately he turned out too heavy for the cake, but I’m told he’ll end up in a place of honor with his cultists and tentacles. Making something that big with Sculpey was a real challenge, and I ended up making a core of aluminum foil over which the sculpey was laid, since they recommend you not try to make or bake anything out of it that’s more than 1/2″ thick. Given that he’s about 5″ overall, that wouldn’t have worked out too well!
Sculpey Cthulhu by Amy Crook
As you can see, his color seems to baffle the camera even in the shade, the vibrant green-screen green just a little too much for its pixely heart.
Sculpey Cultists by Amy Crook
Each of the cultists was done with a different skin and hair color, and they’re about an inch tall, though I made sure to vary the height as well. Cthulhu is a multicultural destroyer of souls!
Sculpey Tentacles by Amy Crook
The tentacles started out rather flat, and then I figured out ways to drape and pose them during baking so they could have some extra dimension when they were emerging from the depths of R’lyeh, or the cake. Whichever.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Tentacles, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: cthulhu, nfs, sculpey, weeble
Tentacle Deeps 8
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 8 by Amy Crook
It’s Tuesday, and that means tentacles! Well, at least here it does.
I used four different colors of pen to ink in these tentacles, giving a depth of field that’s harder to do with the crosshatching texture alone. The fourth, palest green only shows up in the signature and as a tiny tip of tentacle peeking out along the left side. I put them down in reverse order, first the black tentacles, then the dark green, and then the lighter, more blurry green, and finally the tiny bit of bright, pale chartreuse.
I’ve been experimenting with other textural shading in other pieces, but for some reason I just really prefer this simple crosshatching when making tentacles. I’ve got at least two more backgrounds waiting to be be-tentacled, however, so perhaps I’ll try something else next time.
Tentacle Deeps 8, 5″x5″ pen and ink and watercolor on watercolor paper.
I was feeling self-indulgent, so I made a computer wallpaper and iPhone wallpaper of this one. I’ve got it up on my monitor right now!
Tentacle Deeps 8, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: for sale, gorey, green, pen and ink, tentacle deeps, watercolor
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
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