Posts Tagged ‘blood moon’

Blood Moon 9

Friday, August 3rd, 2018

Blood Moon 9 by Amy Crook, 3 bats flying against a red full moon on a violet sky with gold stars

Blood Moon 9, 10″x8″ watercolor on Arches cover white paper

Friday, July 27th was a blood moon for parts of the world that could see the eclipse, so this painting is in honor of that momentous occasion.

The sky is a gorgeous red-violet, deep but not dull, with rich gold stars glittering out of the page. The moon glows with subtle shimmers as well, and three bats fly across, the ruddy light shining through their wing membranes.

The framed photo perhaps best captures the warmth of the colors in this mercurial painting, the layered paint making it different from every angle. Far from being cold, the night is alive with magic and mystery, just waiting for you to join in.

Blood Moon 9, detail, by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 9, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you an see the three tiny bats and the delicate transparency of their wing membranes. Below, the bats are in a frame, fluttering in anticipation of their new home.

Blood Moon 9, framed art by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 9, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books
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Blood Moon 8

Wednesday, February 8th, 2017

Blood Moon 8, original art by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 8, 8″x8″ ink and watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper

Continuing my tradition of painting things that don’t scan well, this new addition to the Blood Moon series has a midnight blue sky and a bright blood red moon, with a deep black tree intersecting both shapes.

The dusky night sky swirls around the blood moon, holding hints of the same red in its depths. The horizon is close enough that a tree seems to grow from the edge of the page, rising up in skeletal silhouette to make intricate black lace against the distant sky.

This painting is gorgeous in person, fascinating in its mix of rich texture and limited color palette.

Blood Moon 8, detail, by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 8, detail, by Amy Crook

Above you can see a much better view of the dusky blue, brilliant red, and delicately textured black of the sky, moon, and tree contrasting beautifully together. Below, you can see how elegantly this painting occupies its frame, just waiting to add its eerie light to your life.

Blood Moon 8, framed art by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 8, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books
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Blood Moon 7

Monday, December 5th, 2016

Blood Moon 7 by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 7, 6″x6″ ink, watercolor, and gel pen on Fluid watercolor paper

An impressive wingspan gives the bird a gorgeous silhouette against this rich, golden-red blood moon. There are subtle copper stars twinkling in the black sky, and the whole image holds the rich texture of the paper it’s painted on.

The dramatic red and black would be beautiful in a wide black frame, but even in the narrow one in the photo it really makes a statement.

Where in your life do you need wings?

Blood Moon 7, detail, by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 7, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see a close-up of the texture of feathers, of the surface of the moon, and the twinkle of stars out in the space beyond. Below, the small frame beautifully contains this dramatic work of art.

Blood Moon 7, detail, by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 7, detail, by Amy Crook

Categories: Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Series and Books
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Blood Moon 6

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015

Blood Moon 6 by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 6 by Amy Crook

This ink wash is a vivid addition to my City series, which is also the 6th of my Blood Moon paintings.

The blood moon glows with a rich red-gold radiance. The sky is home to a thousand glittering golden stars in halo around it. A dark city awaits below, reflecting the glow of them both.

Built in layers, this piece was first a wash of red and gold inks, and then a globe of light in the middle of gold-dusted night, and finally became a city. Each layer is a different kind of ink, even the gold dust.

Blood Moon 6, 8″x8″ brush & ink and ink wash on Fluid watercolor paper.

Blood Moon 6, detail, by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 6, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the shimmering gold dust in the Stormy Grey ink, and the solid Deleter Manga ink that blacks it out where the buildings rise up, with the beautiful red shining through both where appropriate. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, waiting to grace your walls with its eerie beauty.

Blood Moon 6, framed art by Amy Crook

Blood Moon 6, 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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Blood Moon 5

Tuesday, May 6th, 2014

Blood Moon 5 by Amy Crook

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

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

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
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Blood Moon 4

Sunday, May 4th, 2014

Blood Moon 4 by Amy Crook

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

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

Blood Moon 4, framed art by Amy Crook

Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Floating Gallery, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
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Blood Moon

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Blood Moon by Amy Crook

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
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