Posts Tagged ‘orange’
Rhymes With Orange
Thursday, December 8th, 2011
Rhymes With Orange by Amy Crook
Another orange piece! Two in one week! It’s madness!
Or, perhaps I did them on the same day? Well, I suppose it could be so.
The salt pools on this one are colored by salt that was used previously to create texture in other watercolor pieces — I chose a range of warm colors from orange to yellow, and then put in the swirls and spirals to match.
Rhymes With Orange, 7″x5″ salt and watercolor on paper.
Rhymes With Orange, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Reusing “dirty” salt is always a risk, because sometimes the paint doesn’t distribute very well in the salt, as on the left, and sometimes it gets so diluted you can’t see it at all, as on the right. But either way, the salt always seems to retain its sparkle.
Rhymes With Orange, detail 2, by Amy Crook
I thought the black frame really brought out the brightness of the orange. I might try it in a warm brown, too, just for variety.
Rhymes With Orange, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, orange, salt, watercolor
Orange Paisley
Monday, December 5th, 2011
Orange Paisley by Amy Crook
I was experimenting twice over with this piece, first by using different paints in each set of 7 paisleys (for 21 total), and then by drawing the salt pools out into shapes. Finally the background seemed to need a good, strong orange, giving the whole thing a wacky ’70s feel.
Orange Paisley, 7″x5″ watercolor and salt on paper.
Orange Paisley, detail 1, by Amy Crook
In the above detail, you can see the sparkle of the subtle duochrome paint and the way it interacts with the salt. Below, a simpler gold color that’s densest where the salt, too, gathered as they dried together.
Orange Paisley, detail 2, by Amy Crook
And finally you can see the piece in a simple black frame, letting the pattern really shine through.
Orange Paisley, framed art by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, orange, paisley, salt, watercolor
Tentacle Deeps 16
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 16 by Amy Crook
It’s Tuesday and that means tentacles! This is painted on a handmade postcard from India, just like Tentacle Deeps 12 & Tentacle Deeps 13.
I actually use the same two colors of paint for the wash on this as yesterday’s art, but the fade is much looser, and there’s no pure pigment, just different mixtures. When I went to put the tentacles on, it struck me that I hadn’t done a horizontal one yet, and so I used the granular lunar black watercolor to paint in these tentacles. The paint settled into the groovs in the paper, emphasizing the texture of the paper and letting the background color glow through the black as though the tentacles are strangely translucent.
Tentacle Deeps 16, ~4″x6″ watercolor on handmade paper.
I can’t resist taking these bottom-up shots whenever I’m photographing these tentacle pieces these days, even though there’s no salt at all on this one.
Tentacle Deeps 16, detail, by Amy Crook
Here we are, a photo of the framed piece with my iPhone providing scale.
Tentacle Deeps 16, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: for sale, orange, red, tentacle deeps, watercolor
White Hot
Monday, September 26th, 2011
White Hot by Amy Crook
It’s hard to capture the way this piece fairly glows with colour. There’s just two pigments, a pink and a rich orangey-gold that fades to the cream color of the paper in the center. I added seven salt circles, double-drawing the spirals in an orange-red and the apricot gold, so the centers of the salt circles reflect the pink from the corners, and the outer circles of salt crystals reflect the orange from the center.
White Hot, 5″x5″ salt, pen & ink, and watercolor on paper.
White Hot, detail 1, by Amy Crook
The salt crystals add a three-dimensional texture to the image, like planets being drawn into an inverse black hole.
White Hot, detail 2, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, orange, pen and ink, salt, watercolor
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Tentacle Deeps 15
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 15 by Amy Crook
Days of work went into today’s piece, but I think they’re my favorite tentacles yet. I used the same technique of softening pen-and-ink with water as in Tentacle Deeps 14, but then I went through and grew salt crystals along the body of each tentacle. The cross-hatching used three different pens to create the sense of light and depth, and my friend Eric L suggested that it looks like the tentacles are starting to dissolve where the light is hitting them.
Tentacle Deeps 15, 5″x7″ mixed media on paper.
Here you can see a closer view of the texture and the way I created the effect of light fading to darkness.
Tentacle Deeps 15, detail 1, by Amy Crook
I love how this shows off the variation in the tentacle colors, and the way the salt crystals sparkle even with the dark ink suffusing them.
Tentacle Deeps 15, detail 2, by Amy Crook
I finally had the brilliant idea of putting something in the framed shots so you’d get a sense of scale, so enjoy this shot of the tentacles in their frame, hanging out with my iPhone.
Tentacle Deeps 15, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: brush and ink, crosshatching, for sale, orange, pen and ink, red, salt, tentacle deeps
2 Comments »
Violet Midnight 2
Monday, September 19th, 2011
Violet Midnight 2 by Amy Crook
I’ve been thinking about making prints lately, and that’s led me to think about the way that the salt paintings are really unprintable — while a print of a normal piece is maybe half as cool as the real piece, but printing the salt pieces loses 90% of their awesomeness. So, with that in mind, I mixed up a slightly different mix of the violet-black from Violet Midnight and made a piece that only used the salt for visual texture rather than physical structure. There’s no shiny paint, no sparkly salt, just simple ink and watercolor.
I actually started it the same way I do any salt piece, with spirals in ink on paper, but this time I went straight to painting the background (which has little salt-made stars, done the traditional way by scattering salt onto the damp paint), then used plain water to pick up the ink and create halos of golden orange around the sun and larger stars.
Violet Midnight 2, 7″x5″ watercolor, pen and ink on paper.
Here’s how it looks in a frame, with my iPhone for scale:
Violet Midnight 2, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, moon, orange, pen and ink, salt, spirals, violet, watercolor
1 Comment »
Violet Midnight
Thursday, September 8th, 2011
Violet Midnight by Amy Crook
Another image I keep revisiting, the moon glowing in the night sky. I went for a simple duochrome effect, the stars and moon drawn in orange ink, then the stars turned warm and golden when the salt and water were added. I used a dark blue-violet paint, which was making such fascinating shapes and shadows on its own as it pooled and flowed that I decided not to try to add any more stars and let the velvety paint stand on its own. Then I used a metallic copper watercolor to create the haloes around the moon and stars, the color an excellent match to the orange ink.
Violet Midnight, 7″x5″ mixed media on paper, nfs.
This piece has a great contrast between the matte violet paint and shimmery, iridescent copper paint; between the flat ink and three-dimensional salt crystals; between the meticulous spiral pattern in the moon and the random, cloudy shapes in the sky.
Violet Midnight, detail 1, by Amy Crook
Here you can really see how the interplay of colors and textures up close.
Violet Midnight, detail 2, by Amy Crook
A simple black frame protects the salt, and makes the vivid colors really glow.
Violet Midnight, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Flowers, Trees and Landscapes
Tags: moon, nfs, orange, pen and ink, salt, sold, stars, violet, watercolor
3 Comments »
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