Posts Tagged ‘for sale’
Red Planet 2
Friday, July 6th, 2012
Red Planet 2 by Amy Crook
The pitted surface of this planet combines with its warmer tones to be more Mars-like than the first Red Planet painting. I used salt in damp-to-wet watercolor to get the texture, after I’d made a wash that I liked the color variations on. The planets on white paper always make me think of some specimen or illustration in a science book, from some mysterious future where we’ve seen more planets than the nine eight in our solar system (poor Pluto!).
Red Planet 2, 7″x5″ salt and watercolor on paper.
Red Planet 2, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see light reflecting off some of the few little salt crystals that actually formed on the surface. Below, the planet floats serenely in its frame, just waiting to add some science fiction to your life.
Red Planet 2, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, planet, red, salt, watercolor
Fish Skellington
Thursday, July 5th, 2012
Fish Skellington by Amy Crook
The inspiration for this piece came from a bunch of things crashing together in my brain. We played Small World the other day and one of the races I played had a cute little fish skeleton as its icon. My tiny fandom pieces were making me think I might want to do more things like them, in and out of the realm of fannishness. I painted a bunch of washes using my red watercolor palette and one of them I considered drawing on with the white gel pen. And then all of a sudden I thought, no, the white gel pen would be better on black paper, and I got out the blue palette and made this wash that’s much more like the deep ocean.
So for once, there’s not much to say about the technique but I actually know what I was thinking when I created the piece. Weird.
Fish Skellington, 7″x5″ watercolor and gel pen on Arches cover black paper.
Fish Skellington, detail, by Amy Crook
Above you can see a close-up of the wee little fishie, who just isn’t all that happy about his lot in, er, death. Below, you can see him in a frame with the paint catching the sunlight just a bit, and the little skellington reflected in my iPhone’s screen.
Fish Skellington, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: black paper, for sale, gel pen, periwinkle, teal, watercolor
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Tentacle Spiral 3
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012
Tentacle Spiral 3, original art by Amy Crook
I used red-brown at one corner and yellow ochre at the other to make an earthy, warm wash, and then it sat around for a while while I wasn’t sure what to do with it. But when in doubt, I always turn to tentacles, and so I’ve added a third painting to the series. I rather like the effect of the lunar black tentacles on the powdery-matte Japanese watercolor background, with the warm glow coming through them.
Tentacle Spiral 3, watercolor on paper.
Tentacle Spiral 3, detail, by Amy Crook
Above you can see a close-up of the tentacles, and the textures of paper and paint together. I’ve made the detail photo into a computer wallpaper, this one’s less widescreen than yesterday’s for those of you with more square monitors. Below, I’ve put the painting in a frame so you can see how it might look, tucked in a frame on a shelf or perhaps a little piece of wall somewhere, adding tentacles to your home or office.
Tentacle Spiral 3, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books
Tags: brown, for sale, spirals, tentacle spiral, tentacles, watercolor, yellow
Filigree Planet 2
Monday, July 2nd, 2012
Filigree Planet 2 by Amy Crook
One more example of all the tiny spirals, this one with a few purple spirals sneaking in among the blue just to switch things up. The planet itself is a rich, grapey purple with some splashes of lighter periwinkle as highlights. The black space around it has quite a mysterious, almost wormhole-like texture to it, swirling around the planet’s inexorable gravity.
Filigree Planet 2, 7″x5″ watercolor and glitter gel pen on paper.
Filigree Planet 2, detail, by Amy Crook
I love the way the light shimmers off these glittery pens, but they fade to near-invisibility at other angles and distances. I even made you, well, okay, I made myself a computer wallpaper off of the detail shot above, but you can use it, too. Below, you can see the piece tucked into a black frame, reflecting serenely in my iPhone (as usual, it’s not included, heh).
Filigree Planet 2, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books
Tags: blue, filigree, for sale, glitter gel pen, planet, purple, spirals, violet, watercolor
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Pomegranate
Thursday, June 28th, 2012
Pomegranate watercolor by Amy Crook
This would be one of the pieces full of little tiny spirals (as were both this week’s prior art posts, really) that caused me to Instagram my poor ace-bandaged wrist instead of posting art on Saturday. Well, this combined with a work project that involved a lot of sustained precision trackpad work, anyway. Two things that really don’t go together, apparently!
Speaking of things that caused me trouble, it’s very hard to find a good quote about pomegranates not from the Bible. I was very pleased to finally find this quote from a translation of Homer, though I swear pomegranates figured in more stuff in English class.
I originally painted this as another mostly-circular wash, but when the shape and color started to become decidedly pomegranate-like, I embraced it. The spirals are like the seeds, to me, the mystery hiding inside the lovely fruit. The quote came last, and as you can see below, the word “glows” was done with two shades of red and a nice little smear to create a halo.
Pomegranate, 7″x5″ pen & ink and watercolor on paper.
Pomegranate, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Above, the glow, both in the inner line work of a brighter red, and the soft pink smear around it created by running an eraser over the still-wet ink. Below, you can see a close-up of the spirals and the way the burgundy ink interacts with the various shades of watercolor beneath it.
Pomegranate, detail 2, by Amy Crook
And finally here what it looks like in a frame, just waiting to bring a bit of glowing mystery to your home, or the corner of your office. The frame isn’t included, but I’m happy to add it in for a small additional fee.
Pomegranate, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Whimsical and Strange, Words Words Words
Tags: calligraphy, for sale, pen and ink, pomegranate, spirals, watercolor
Tentacle Reach
Tuesday, June 26th, 2012
Tentacle Reach by Amy Crook
One of the colors I have in my flower-shaped Japanese watercolor palette is a vivid, almost fluorescent orange that makes a surprisingly subtle wash. I started doing another Tentacle Deeps with the red pen on the orange wash, but i liked the reaching-out gesture of the first crosshatched tentacle so much I decided to do something a little different.
I grabbed my Apricot fountain pen and brought another tentacle down from above, the two of them not quite touching as they try to cross the distance. The result echoes a lot of iconic images without actually copying any of them.
Also, there’s spirals.
Tentacle Reach, 7″x5″ pen & ink and watercolor on paper.
Tentacle Reach, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see a close-up of the crosshatched tentacles and the aching space between them. The red pen has a fatter nib, and its ink tended to bleed more where the paint wash was denser, which gives the orange tentacle a more ethereal feel by comparison. Below, you can see them tucked in a frame, hanging out with my jellyfish phone for scale.
Tentacle Reach, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Tentacles
Tags: crosshatching, for sale, orange, pen and ink, tentacles, watercolor
Filigree Moon
Monday, June 25th, 2012
Filigree Moon by Amy Crook
I’m utterly delighted by this piece, from the salt pools with their soft, chalky centers to the fine filigree of glittering spirals over the subtly colored moon. I almost didn’t put a price on it at all, and I’ll definitely find a spot for it among my shelves where it can bring me delight for as long as it lives here.
The glitter gel pen has no actual pigment in it, and the glitter in it is remarkably large, so that you get an effect of translucency that reminds me of glitter nail polish. From some angles the filigree is bright and obvious, but from others, like the one in the scanner, it’s barely there at all. The tiny salt-pool stars add their own bit of sparkle to the piece, and the velvety black paper makes the perfect space backdrop.
Filigree Moon, 7″x5″ salt, Japanese watercolor and glitter gel pen on Arches cover black paper.
Filigree Moon, detail, by Amy Crook
Above, you can see the filigree lit up by the sunlight, spirals and curlicues that shimmer and vanish when you turn the painting away from the sun. Below, you can see that I’ve finally had the brilliant idea to photograph the black paper pieces without the glass in the frame, and magically there’s no glare. Fancy that.
Filigree Moon, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
Tags: black paper, filigree, for sale, glitter gel pen, moon, periwinkle, salt, spirals, watercolor
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