Archive for the ‘Whimsical and Strange’ Category

April 2022 Patreon sketches

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

Guess who’s been doing sketches on Patreon for months and not posting them to the blog? It’s me! I’ll be getting the last many months of them out on the blog over the next few weeks, so please enjoy the ridiculousness.

April 2022 ACEO sketches by Amy Crook

April 2022 ACEO sketches by Amy Crook

  • This one wasn’t a prompt, I just wanted to draw trees and birbs on this orange sunset
  • Jeff asked for ‘distracted’
  • Another non-prompt experiment with salt and watercolor on yupo that got some marker topography
  • And ‘rose candy’ for Eric

These have all found a new home, but some of the later ones are still available for the discerning collector. You can also make an account and follow me on Patreon for free, where these are always posted publicly, or Instagram or Twitter, where I post some things as the mood strikes me.

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Completed Commissions, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, People, Figures and Faces, Pretty Words, Whimsical and Strange
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Random Recipe: Minted Lemonade

Thursday, August 18th, 2022

A recipe made of 4 ingredients, and to your own taste!

You will need:

  • a pitcher
  • boiling water
  • fresh mint
  • fresh lemons
  • sugar

Make mint tea! Pour boiling water over washed fresh mint and steep for 5-7 minutes. Longer goes stronger, but much over 7 minutes and you’re adding flavors you probably don’t want.

Filter out the mint and then pour the tea into your pitcher.

Add the sugar to taste, keeping in mind that you’ll be adding a lot of lemon juice later. You want very sweet, minty tea. Cool it down.

Add lemon juice to taste and drink up!

For reference, I added 1/4 cup of sugar to 4 cups of tea, and the juice of 3 lemons. It could maybe have used a fourth for real tartness. I used a bundle of mint from our farmshare, and everything else was just guesswork and experimentation.

It’s pretty tasty, though.

 

PS – Please enjoy my new hobby, 8-bit pixel art!

Categories: Whimsical and Strange, Words Words Words
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District of the Small Gods

Tuesday, June 7th, 2022

District of the Small Gods, 7″x5″ watercolor on paper

This thickly textured paper is porous and absorbent, but brushed tend to skip over the deep valleys in the page and leave fascinating voids in the wash.

A cat-shaped temple holds center court in this strange alien district, with other small gods represented by their own odd architectures. Is the building made of pointy things a god of war or merely one of pointy things? Does the the shape on top of the spire represent a blind eye, or an all-seeing one?

What small gods do you think reside here, waiting for their small offerings?

District of the Small Gods, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see thee way the light glows over and through the Temple of the Cat. Below, the art is properly encased in a frame, ready to bring strange delight to a shelf or wall.

District of the Small Gods, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books, Whimsical and Strange
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Storm Crow

Saturday, June 4th, 2022

Storm Crow, 8″x8″ watercolor on paper

A blooming tree takes up most of the paper, black branches holding up blue-green puffs of foliage and deep fuchsia blossoms.

Despite that, the crow with rain falling from beneath its wings is the first thing to draw the eye, caught in fluid motion as it brings a storm with it. A glowing full moon ducks behind the tree, but it can’t hide from the clouds forever.

Despite the darkness of the color palette, this painting has a lovely whimsy to it that belongs in someone’s home, adding some dark delight to their decor.

Storm Crow, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the crowd raining droplets down from its wings onto the swirling tree. Below, this larger painting fills its frame beautifully.

Storm Crow, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Whimsical and Strange
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March 2022 Patreon Sketches

Monday, May 9th, 2022

There should be a Floating Gallery coming for you June 1, but for now please enjoy a nice big batch of sketch cards for my darling Patreon patrons! Some of them are for specific people, and then extras get sent to my Snow Leopards in with their other quarterly goodies.

March 2022 ACEO sketches by Amy Crook

There’s eight here, only two of which are spoken for! From top left:

  • Purple abstract! I dunno, I just like it.
  • Weird silly drippy experiment abstract, which I also like now that I’ve plaid-ified the gold and turquoise a bit.
  • Jeff asked for “writer’s block” and got this shiny, trippy bit of weirdness.
  • Eric asked for SPAAAAAACE! and his is also shiny, but he gets a TARDIS.
  • This cool sky I made got a city and some birbs to go with it.
  • I gave this little raven some more cowbell and untucked his face from his wing.
  • I also gave this abstract some more cowbell and now it’s reasonably unrecognizable and also has some Concentric vibes.
  • And this last one is full Concentric, with a bunch of bursts that kind of vanish and 3 that do not. Totally something that doesn’t work in a photo, sorry.

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Completed Commissions, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
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January 2022 Patreon Sketches

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

All caught up! I’ll post February’s patron sketch cards probably in early April, as I give my supporters the month of to request, and then give myself the month after to draw them and then post to Patreon on the 28th. Now that I’ve made them all this cool artist trading card/artist card edition original (ACEO) size, it’s been a lot less friction for me to sit down and get started on a set of them, and get them done with a few days of work.

ACEO sketch cards by Amy Crook

I did a half dozen this time around, almost entirely watercolor. From the top left:

  • Nick prompted “besos!” and gets Bruno from Encanto smooching a capybara, but we shouldn’t be talking about it
  • Roxanne B wanted tea, and gets this precarious pile
  • Amy B asked for a “cheeky monkey” of a kitty, and gets this little jerkface
  • this sunny sky in watercolor on yupo is just for my own amusement, and I guess if CSI ever needs my fingerprints
  • Jefferson asked for coffee and gets addict Ditto
  • Rey & Amber asked for “if you’re not bleeding, it’s not an emergency” and Amber got sky blue hair without having to go to the salon

I may do a sketch sale pretty soon, which posts to my Patreon first and then to my email list, so join one of those if you’d like a chance to own some of these!

Categories: Completed Commissions, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, People, Figures and Faces, Pretty Words, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
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November 2021 Patreon Sketches

Thursday, March 3rd, 2022

And here is November! As you can see, some of these got done in January, but I am, in fact, currently caught up, so go me! These days I need extras for my Snow Leopards and Voidcats that don’t make requests, so everyone gets some fun art in their swag mailings. We’ll see how long those quarterly packets last, but the first one was a success!

From the top left:

  • random night scene with Copics on Yupo
  • “spice coffee” for Jefferson
  • another random night scene with watercolor on black paper
  • a variation on concentrics with white gouache on sparkly watercolor
  • “autumn eeveeon” for Eric
  • blobcat ft Trotsky’s liquid bones
  • “tyrannical threes” for Rey & Amber

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Completed Commissions, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, People, Figures and Faces, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
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