Posts Tagged ‘pen and ink’
Scribble Goth
Friday, September 30th, 2011
Ditzy Bones fabric print by Amy Crook
Friday is for fabric! At least this one is. I’ve created a line of fabrics over at Spoonflower called Scribble Goth, made up of scribbly skulls, spikey stripes and even one lone ditzy print of teeny tiny bones.
I haven’t made all of these designs available for purchase yet, because there’s a small but significant cost associated with doing so (it adds up!). If you’d like to buy one of these fabrics for your own projects, just let me know (comment here! contact there! email! twitter! whatever works for you, really) and I’ll buy a swatch for myself so you can get sewing. I’m even willing to make other colorways, if you’d like a blood red skirt or some Halloween orange pajamas.
Scribble Goth Skull Border fabric design in two colorways by Amy Crook
I’ve also made a version of the above border that’s got the rest of the fabric covered in the polka dots below.
Scribble Goth Skully Polka Dot fabric design in two colorways by Amy Crook
I’ve got a trio of stripes using the spikey cross from the border, though I only put two of them in the post.
Scribble Goth Cross Stripe 1 in two colorways by Amy Crook
Scribble Goth Cross Stripe 2 in two colorways by Amy Crook
And my favorite of all the patterns, a different sort of polka dot with the skulls arranged in florets.
Scribble Goth Skull Florets fabric design in two colorways by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Zombies, Skulls, and Other Morbid Things
Tags: bones, cross, fabric, goth, pen and ink, skull, spoonflower
2 Comments »
A Murder of Crows
Thursday, September 29th, 2011
A Murder of Crows by Amy Crook
This piece uses several different techniques together but really just one pen, although I did go back in and add just a hint of color to the shadowy, sunlit crows in their flight. I’m very pleased with the overall effect, which makes me think of a cover or title page to some mystery novel or horror story. There’s even 13 crows in my murder to make it extra spooky.
A Murder of Crows, 6″x6″ pen & ink and salt on watercolor paper.
I like the way the salt is nearly invisible until the sunlight hits it, adding sparkle and color to an otherwise monochrome image.
A Murder of Crows, detail 1, by Amy Crook
The curving edges on each bird were partially created by the puddles of inky salt water, an imprecise process at best, which helps to give them a sense of being backed and blurred by strong sunlight.
A Murder of Crows, detail 2, by Amy Crook
Categories: Daily Art, Sea Creatures and Other Animals, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: brush and ink, calligraphy, crow, for sale, murder of crows, pen and ink, salt
1 Comment »
Weeble Basement Cat
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
Weeble Basement Cat by Amy Crook
Not my usual weeble, but I was inspired by this lolcat to draw my own version of a Basement Cat. What can I say, I spend all day on the internet. At least it’s not Nyancat.
Categories: Daily Art, Things I'm a Fan Of, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: basement cat, cat, nfs, pen and ink
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
1 Comment »
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 »
Modern Snow
Friday, September 16th, 2011
Modern Snow by Amy Crook, $555
It’s always fascinating to me how the different colors of ink react to the salt — some of them don’t actually spread into the halo of crystal formations, but this one took its rich blue color all the way to the tips, leaving the darker, more violet-toned ink behind in the central circle. This piece combines the blue snowflake-like salt formations from Snowflakes with the fascinating brushwork from Aglow 2 to get an entirely new effect that reminds me of a pattern from the ’50s or ’60s.
Modern Snow, 5″x5″ mixed media on paper, $555, framed, with free shipping.
Like all the paintings I made using the lunar black, this one’s got the gorgeous contrast between the velvety dark areas and the sparkling salt crystals.
Modern Snow, detail, by Amy Crook
A simple frame will keep your art safe from damage, even those strange sideways crystals that grow at odd angles out of the paper.
Modern Snow, framed, by Amy Crook, $555
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: blue, for sale, pen and ink, salt, snow, snowflake, watercolor
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