Posts Tagged ‘salt’
Genuine Pink
Monday, November 28th, 2011
Genuine Pink by Amy Crook, $222
It’s quite hard to capture the rich mineral color of the Rhodonite Pink watercolor, which isn’t quite as bright as it shows in the detail image below, but has a dusky quality that’s overly pronounced in the scan above. The salt is fancy pink Himalayan salt, and the orange-pink minerals in it tended to sink and gather at the center of each pool.
Pink isn’t my favorite color, but I have to admit I’m fascinated by all of the genuine mineral paints from this company, which have complex and subtle undertones, and I think this one goes well with the unusual tint from the pink salt.
Genuine Pink, 5″x7″ mixed media on paper, $222, framed, with free shipping.
Genuine Pink, detail, by Amy Crook
I think the framed image gets the best feel for the paint colour, but the salt looks quite like it does in the detail photo, above.
Genuine Pink, framed, by Amy Crook, $222
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: pink, salt, watercolor
Horizon bookmark
Monday, November 21st, 2011
Horizon bookmark by Amy Crook
This little bookmark is a relative of my larger piece, On the Horizon. I’ve been field-testing it and actually the salt crystals are really there to stay. The salt pools are just shallow enough that they don’t scratch up the page or overly stuff the book, and the paper it’s on is a nice sturdy watercolor paper.
Horizon Bookmark, 1.5″x7″ mixed media on paper.
Horizon bookmark, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: blue, bookmark, buy a bookmark, for sale, pen and ink, salt, stars, watercolor
2 Comments »
Raindrops Falling
Thursday, November 10th, 2011
Raindrops Falling by Amy Crook, $222
I made the irregular lines of salt pools with the intention of doing something with vertical lines of pen and ink, and then once I looked at the piece it just really wanted paint instead. I used pure Ultramarine Turquoise to create the streaky lines, and the whole thing reminds me of watching a really strong rain storm through a window, a few drops close enough to watch and the rest making the world a blur.
Raindrops Falling, 5″x7″ mixed media on paper, $222, framed, with free shipping.
I have been ridiculously busy this week and don’t have proper detail or framed photos, but by now I expect you know what sort of plain black frames I use. Here’s a close-up of the lower right corner, so you can see the salt crystals that have grown off the edge of the paper, and the way the paint caught on the bigger salt crystals.
Raindrops Falling, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, pen and ink, salt, teal, watercolor
Pond
Friday, November 4th, 2011
Pond by Amy Crook, $323
I decided that I wanted to go back to the original visual image that came to me with the salt pools and depict them in blue-green ink, with ripples going out, fading as they go from each pool. I imagine these like the frozen moment after the drop has hit, the ring of bigger crystasl around the edge like the splash, and each subsequent ring of paint a ripple growing fainter as it travels away from the center point. The whole piece has a very soothing, Zen-like quality to it that I quite enjoy.
Pond, 7″x5″ mixed media on paper, $323, framed, with free shipping.
The blue-green quality of this color is a bit hard to capture, the scanner wants to turn it blue and the camera wants to turn the white paper red, thus making the paint very green when the whites are corrected back.
Pond, detail, by Amy Crook
Of course, like all my three-dimensional salt paintings, it ships tucked safely into a simple frame.
Pond, framed, by Amy Crook, $323
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: aqua, for sale, pen and ink, salt, water, watercolor
New Leaf
Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
New Leaf by Amy Crook
A lot of the time I resist the urge to make things pretty and decorative, so with this piece I let myself make smooth, lovely progressions of shapes and colors all I wanted. I was experimenting with salt on a new paper, which turned out to be a bit too absorbent to make formations, but still left sparkly pools of color. Then I got my awesome new Japanese gouache-like paints out (watercolors, but opaque!) and just noodled about with two shades of green and a series of shapes and patterns.
Although the scanner tends to shift it to yellow, the lighter parts of this painting are a vivid new-leaf green, and the whole thing has a lovely rough, hand-torn edge. I’m thinking of framing it with photo corners on black mat board to bring out the roughness around the edges of the otherwise smooth, decorative shapes.
New Leaf, 8″x8″ mixed media on paper, nfs (sold).
Even my camera didn’t really like the lighter green color, but here you can see just a touch of the salt sparkle nestling amongst the matte paint and finely textured paper.
New Leaf, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: decorative, gouache, green, nfs, pen and ink, salt, sold
2 Comments »
Tentacle Deeps 18
Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 18 by Amy Crook
More tentacles! I started this piece with salt that had already been gently used and had a coating of color on the outside, arranging them in a pattern that made me think of balloons floating up or perhaps fluff blowing off a dandelion. Once I got the idea to attach them to tentacles, however, I couldn’t resist! I used several shades of red and orange ink to create the tentacles, and of course my scanner hates red dyes and so a lot of the subtle gradation you can see in person is lost.
I decided to create the “deeps” part of the painting with simple crosshatching, electing to go with a fairly loose style which often ran into the tentacles, which makes them just a bit more unreal. I do wonder what the salt pools represent in this context, attached at the end of each vivid red tentacle. Egg sacs? Sensory organs? Lunch?
Tentacle Deeps 18, 7″x5″ mixed media on paper.
Tentacle Deeps 18, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: black, crosshatching, for sale, pen and ink, red, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Sherlock bookmark 2
Saturday, October 22nd, 2011
Sherlock Bookmark 2 by Amy Crook
I was experimenting with some new paper and salt, and after tearing down a 8″x8″ square for another piece I was left with this strip. I made my usual spirals, except this time I kept them all along the top edge rather than scattered over the whole page. They didn’t form proper salt pools, but I did like the will-o-the-wisp quality that was left, with just a few tiny salt crystals and the soft swirls of ink like a glowing light.
In a fit of 2am whimsy, I pencilled in a half-dozen little Sherlocks, first examining, then chasing, and finally catching his very own will-o-the-wisp.
Sherlock Bookmark 2, 8″x2.75″ mixed media on paper, nfs (sold).
You can see the salt crystals much better in this detail photo, and some of the teeny tiny detail in the little Sherlocks.
Sherlock Bookmark 2, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, People, Figures and Faces, Series and Books, Things I'm a Fan Of
Tags: bookmark, nfs, pen and ink, pencil, salt, sherlock, sketch, sold
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