Posts Tagged ‘nfs’
Salt Bookmark 2
Monday, February 13th, 2012
It’s bookmark week! Lately when I tear giant sheets of art paper down to the sizes I like to work in, I’ve been saving the blank scraps, and this week I have enough finished bookmarks to make a week of it. I tried to do at least one in each of the styles I’ve been using, so there’s quite a variety, and they’re all for sale and a bookmark-friendly price. I’m not going to put them in the main art shop, but you can always go look at the collection (plus my older couple of contributions) by going to the bookmark tag. I’ve priced these nice and low so that you can get your hands on an Amy Crook original without breaking the bank, and have a bit of art to carry with you, keeping your place safe and beautiful.
Each one of these is an original, one-of-a-kind work of art, and I decided to start the week off with a salt painting. Barely-green salt and two colors of green glitter gel pen give this piece a shimmer that’s really appealing. The salt crystals are small enough not to get crunched off or damage your book, though they might wear over time, the way these things do.
Salt Bookmark 2, 1″x5″ ink-dyed salt and glitter gel pen on black paper, nfs, sold.
Above you can see the contrast between the pen that’s mostly glitter, and the pen that’s a fine metallic ink, both in color and density. The salt and its halo both glimmer in the sunlight. Below, you can see its size compared to a standard hardcover book.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: black paper, bookmark, crosshatching, gel pen, nfs, pen and ink, salt, sold
Blue Moon
Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Blue Moon by Amy Crook
I chose soft blue pen and ink to pair with a rich, deep blue background, and then added salt in two different ways for texture. The brightest stars are the now-familiar salt pools, and there’s a scattering of dimmer ones formed by salt sprinkled onto the damp watercolor paint and brushed off once it dried. It was still too stark for me, so I went and found my tiny dot-card sample of interference blue and added haloes of half-there light around each salt pool and the moon, too, which you can barely see in the above scan, and better down in the detail shots below.
Blue Moon, 7″x5″ salt, pen & ink, watercolor and iridescent watercolor on paper, nfs (sold).

Blue Moon, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Above you can see three of the salt pools up close and personal, light glinting off their facets and a faint shadow of the interference blue. Below, the shimmer’s caught the light and you can see the brushed haloes around each large object, as well as the little starbursts of texture in the background of the deep blue sky.
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Blue Moon, detail 2, by Amy Crook
And of course I took a photo of it framed, once I had it all ready for the show. In the sunlight, the background looks less black, though it’s still velvety-matte against the shimmering, sparkling stars and moon.

Blue Moon, framed watercolor by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books
Tags: blue, blue moon, iridescent, moon, nfs, pen and ink, salt, sold, spirals, watercolor
2 Comments »
Snape and Harry Shrinky Dinks
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012
Yes, that is a dime off in the distance there. Yes, they are just that wee. Somehow, I forget every time just how small they’re going to get! I have no idea what I’ll do with these, possibly a random giveaway. I have jump rings for them (which are ginormous compared to the actual charms) but it’s much easier to photograph them flat without.
Here you can see them before shrinking, next to a pair of scissors for relative scale. Their colors are also less intense, since they get much more pigment-dense when the material they’re on shrinks.
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Snape and Harry Shrinky Dinks, before, by Amy Crook
And then a clearer shot of the after, with the same pair of scissors and the additional dime for reference. SO WEE.
Snape and Harry Shrinky Dinks, incredibly wee, Sharpie marker on Shrinky Dink plastic, nfs.
Categories: Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: Harry Potter, nfs, shrinky dinks, snape
Abandon All Hope
Monday, January 30th, 2012
A perfect message for your Monday, really, this print reads:
ABANDON ALL HOPE
Ye Who Enter Here**If you have already abandoned all
hope, please disregard this notice.
I saw this quote on a LOLcat ages ago, which of course I totally failed to bookmark, and made a digital poster of it. I could never quite bring myself to list it in my Etsy shop, however, and I think that was because it just wasn’t really my style. So, I took watercolor and Sharpie marker and remade it by hand with scribbly Amy-style Sharpie calligraphy, and I liked it so much I’m keeping the original.
Abandon All Hope, 8″x10″ watercolor and Sharpie Marker on paper, not for sale. However, prints are available at my Etsy shop.
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Words Words Words
Tags: calligraphy, lolcat, mine all mine, nfs, print, sharpie marker, watercolor
Flying Spaghetti Monster
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
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Flying Spaghetti Monster sketch by Amy Crook
Have you been Touched by His Noodly Appendage?
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art
Tags: coloring book, doodle, nfs, pen and ink, sketch
Dichrome
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Despite the rather random way this image came about (and really, do my abstract pieces come about any other way?), I’m really in love with the stuttering flow of the paint and the subtle transition from warm orange to cool, soft blue. The salt pools came later, using a black ink that separates in water into brown and blue, which mixed beautifully with the pink Himalayan salt.
The swoop of paint reminds me of clouds at sunset, breaking up as they rise up into the sky, but then I’m not sure what the salt pools would become, though they were absolutely necessary for the visual balance of the piece.
Dichrome, 6″x6″ watercolor, ink and salt on paper, nfs (sold).
There’s a lot of variation in the salt pools this time around, and here you can really see the colors of them and how they echo the paint colors.
And here’s another view of the same section that allows you to really appreciate the geometric crystals in the big pool, and the chunk of pink salt with its rough surfaces that’s nearby. I always find the close-up photos of the salt crystal formations fascinating.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: blue, nfs, orange, salt, sold, watercolor
2 Comments »
L is for Lestrade
Friday, January 13th, 2012
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L is for Lestrade by Amy Crook
Happy Friday the 13th! I bring you a fourth adorably morbid installment in my Baker Street Tinies Edward Gorey/Sherlock pastiche commissions. Lestrade is taken directly from H is for Hector in the original book, though Hector wasn’t texting at the time of his untimely demise.
I highly recommend clicking to see the image larger, if only so you can appreciate my absurdly painstaking work. The original is sold, but there are cards (and soon prints) available in my Etsy shop.
L is for Lestrade, 8.5″x5.5″ pen and ink on paper, sold.
Categories: Completed Commissions, 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, lestrade, nfs, pastiche, pen and ink, sherlock
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