Archive for the ‘Whimsical and Strange’ Category
Weeble Wednesday: Michael Beckwith
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
Michael Beckwith cartoon by Amy Crook
I’m back to cartooning! I’ve finally gotten the marker refills I was waiting on, and so the first of the new weebles is my code monkey. Michael Beckwith does a lot of the programming for my client sites (and this one, too!), learning all the ins and outs of WordPress development so I don’t have to.
When he asked to be a cartoon, I couldn’t resist adding a few extras — he wanted the piratical wooden leg and crutch for his props, so I also gave him the little pirate hat, and added the monkey on his t-shirt. He doesn’t actually have a wooden leg that I know of, but he’s definitely on the Pirate side of the war against the Ninjas, so that’s good enough for me.
Click here to find out how you can be a cartoon, too.
“Becoming a cartoon was surprisingly painless. A few questions, a picture,
and some patience, and soon enough I was a whole new man. Or, well, cartoon.”
-Michael Beckwith
Categories: Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: cartoon, code monkey, copic marker, pen and ink, weeble
2 Comments »
Weeble Wednesday: Bat!
Saturday, March 5th, 2011
Weeble Bat by Amy Crook
When I asked my friends what other cards I should do for Halloween, they were unanimous in requesting a bat, so here he is! I elected to save myself some future carpal tunnel and colored the background with Photoshop, but the rest of it’s done by hand with my trusty Copic markers.
I love the patterns bats make when they fly, so different from birds somehow, so I drew in a few of his friends who are flying off into the sunset without him. Don’t worry, though, he’ll catch up, he was just mugging for the “photo.”
Weeble Bat, 5″x7″ pen and ink and Copic marker on watercolor paper.
Categories: Daily Art, Series and Books, Whimsical and Strange, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: bat, copic marker, halloween, pen and ink, photoshop, weeble
Weeble Wednesday: Dancing Skeleton
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
Dancing Skeleton by Amy Crook
This little guy is a sketch I did during a slow moment when I was having a “Meet the Artist” day last month. My window at the Book Shop is down now, but this funky little guy lives on.
Categories: Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: nfs, pen and ink, weeble
Blood Moon
Monday, February 28th, 2011
Blood Moon by Amy Crook
Tonight I got out some watercolor paper and my paints and sat down to just play. I painted a number of washes for future use. This red-pink circle had dried just enough that, once the paints were put away, I sat with a red fountain pen and just started shading. Once I’d put in a small section of red on red, I started to see the moon shape forming, so I finished it up deliberately. Then, at the end, I took a darker red pen and put in the little spirals, over the places I’d dripped in a bit of blue-black when the wash was still wet.
I used a simpler texture than the one from my Texture Experiment 1, which let the work go faster and less precisely. In general, however, I’m finding a heretofore-unknown penchant for obsessive detail and crosshatching. I must be maturing; the last time I tried it with etching, I hated the fine, tedious work.
Blood Moon, 5″x5″ watercolor, pen and ink on reused watercolor paper, sold.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: blood moon, crosshatching, moon, nfs, pen and ink, sold, spiral, watercolor
3 Comments »
Victorian Wallpaper
Friday, February 25th, 2011
Victorian Wallpaper 1 by Amy Crook
After doing my hatboxes for the window display, and reading way too much Edward Gorey and Arthur Conan Doyle, I’ve been itching to try my hand at a Victorian-style wallpaper pattern. This is my first attempt, a little wonky but I like the way my scribbled inks work with the ornate scrollwork. Below I’ve done a few mock-ups of what it might look like in different color patterns. (more…)
Categories: Daily Art, Whimsical and Strange, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: pen and ink, wallpaper
1 Comment »
S is for Sherlock
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
S is for Sherlock by Amy Crook
Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies is my absolute favourite of works — I get to die first, after all — and so when I was experimenting with my Micron pens the urge to parody BBC’s new Sherlock by mashing up the two was irresistible.
Click the image if you’d like to really see the ridiculously obsessive line work, or just enjoy the smaller version where it all blends into a texture.
I decided to combine the pose from “S is for Susan who perished of fits” and the caption and setting from “N is for Neville who died of ennui” in order to capture the essence of modern Sherlock in his state of utter boredom. The window isn’t precisely true to the show (there’s an ornate railing of some kind outside, and curtains), but I really liked the boring brickwork from the N page, so I copied that faithfully and tediously.
I never really thought I’d learn to like shading in such a time-consuming style, but I’m already thinking about other ways I can make use of it. I’ve already got plans to do a companion piece to this for poor John, since Gorey set me up so very well with “J is for James who took lye by mistake.”
S is for Sherlock who died of ennui, 8.5″x6.5″ pen and ink on sketchbook paper, sold.
You can still get the pair of them as handmade blank greeting cards on Etsy, though!
Categories: Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: baker street tinies, crosshatching, edward gorey, nfs, pastiche, pen and ink, sherlock, sold
3 Comments »
Moleskine Volant: Dragonflies
Monday, February 14th, 2011
Dragonflies Volant by Amy Crook
A while back I picked up a 5-pack of Sharpie oil-based paint markers, wanting to experiment with the medium a little bit, and then (like so many such purchases) I totally didn’t make the time. We were talking on Twitter last night about the issue of buying supplies for new media and it inspired me to pull out some blank Moleskine Volants (a blue 2-pack) and play around.
I have a few pieces of dishware from Japan with dragonflies on them, and I’ve always found them fascinating, maybe because we didn’t really have them where I grew up. I have a really limited palette here, so I just toyed around with the various possible color combinations on the three big guys, then added in the little guys for some extra interest. The notebook in this case is a really dark blue that’s nearly black, so it provided a dramatic backdrop for the bright primary dragonflies.
Dragonflies, 5″x8.25″ Sharpie oil markers on a 96-page blank Moleskine Volant, nfs (sold).
Categories: Daily Art, Moleskines, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: dragonfly, moleskine, nfs, oil markers, sharpie, sold, volant
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