Posts Tagged ‘salt’
Tentacle Deeps 10
Tuesday, April 26th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 10 by Amy Crook
Tuesday is a great day for tentacles, don’t you think?
The rich, bloody red of this paint seemed to cry out for dark, velvety tentacles, so I did just two layers and then snuck in something new, a background effect with salt and an opaque yellow paint that created red salt crystals where it overlapped the background, and subtle white ones on the edges of a few of the tentacles. The extra detail seems to increase the feeling of eldritch horror, as though madness lies just around the corner if one could comprehend the meaning behind it all.
Tentacle Deeps 10, 5″x5″ watercolor and salt.
I’ve also made an iPhone wallpaper and computer wallpaper out of this one, as well, enjoy!
Tentacle Deeps 10, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: for sale, red, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor
Lemon Heart
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
Lemon Heart by Amy Crook
This piece went through several incarnations before I got it to something I was happy with. The final product has a cheerfulness to it that goes well with the lemony yellow, enhanced by multiple layers of salt, watercolor, and pen and ink in two shades of green. The salt pool at the upper left formed a heart all by itself, so I couldn’t resist giving it an outline in the same grass-green ink as the spirals below, which tended to run and pool wherever there was enough salt left on the paper.
The bright new-leaf green of the spiral-textured section is done with a Pilot fountain pen from Japan, and the ink surprised me by being nearly obliterated when I dropped water onto it, unlike the black pen from that same line, which tended to blur but stay strong in Salt Cell 2.
Lemon Heart, 6″x4″ watercolor, salt and pen and ink on handmade watercolor postcard, $99 with free shipping.
You can see below how the salt made sparkly craters in some places on the surface of the piece, though this photo was taken before I was completely finished, and some of the texture has since been obliterated or changed.
Lemon Heart, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, green, salt, watercolor, yellow
Tentacle Deeps 9
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Tentacle Deeps 9 by Amy Crook
Once again, I bring you tentacles for Tuesday!
This watercolor piece uses double the salt for its effects. First I added rich texture and some orangey-gold color to the background with the large, coarse salt crystals. Later I used smaller Kosher salt on the tentacles themselves, putting the salt on after painting each one to get the maximum effect.
Something about this background made me want paler tentacles, so there’s less layers as a result. The salt texture is more dramatically visible, making the tentacles look as though they’ve got barnacles attached from years under the deep oceans.
Tentacle Deeps 9, 4″x6″ watercolor and salt.
I’ve also made an iPhone wallpaper and computer wallpaper out of this one, as well, enjoy!
Tentacle Deeps 9, framed, by Amy Crook
Categories: Angels, Cthulhu, and Other Myths, Daily Art, Free Wallpapers, Series and Books, Tentacles
Tags: for sale, salt, tentacle deeps, watercolor, yellow
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Meteoric
Monday, April 11th, 2011
Meteoric by Amy Crook
This piece went through several incarnations and changes. My original red wash turned a peachy-orange that I wasn’t expecting when it dried with the salt, and the crater-like formations in the lower left needed something to balance them out. At first I tried adding another layer of salt craters, but that didn’t really help the imbalance, and so I ended up taking first the lighter red and then a dark burgundy pen and drawing in the lines, which tended to blur and spread whenever the pen passed over an area that had been densely soaked in salt water. Then I added one final wash of plain water in the corner, blurring and mixing the reds into a rather surprising fuchsia through which the lines can still be faintly seen.
Though the first incarnation had some accidental overtones with the pink salt spots in the center of soft peach circles, the final has a rather science fiction feel of a meteor shower streaking downward to further ravage the damaged orange surface of the planet below.
Meteoric, 5″x5″ watercolor and pen and ink on watercolor paper, $169 with free shipping.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, fuchsia, orange, pen and ink, red, salt, watercolor
Burning Planet
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
Burning Planet by Amy Crook, $169
A circle is such a simple form, and yet I feel like I could find an infinite variation in them. This one, too, looks the surface of a planet to me, or maybe some alien sun, the swirls of almost neon yellow marked by orange and red patterns.
This time I used my Windsor & Newton watercolors rather than the Japanese pigment inks, and it’s really interesting how the different media react differently to the addition of the salt. Rather than drying to a fine powder, each little spot of orange-red on the yellow paint is actually a salt crystal formed with the pigment-rich water as the salt on top dissolved, and then dried. If you look closely you can see the flat, squarish shapes of the salt crystals (click the image to enlarge). It even sparkles in the sunlight.
Burning Planet, 5″x5″ salt and watercolor on watercolor paper.
Here’s a terrible iPhone photo of the painting at an angle, so you can see the sun sparkling off the crystals:
Burning Planet, detail, by Amy Crook
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, orange, planet, salt, sun, watercolor, yellow
Tentacle Planet
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011
Tentacle Planet by Amy Crook
I guess I’ve just had tentacles on the brain lately! The first day I was experimenting with salt, I painted up the central circle of opaque gouache, which ended up looking a bit like Mars to me when it dried. The salt makes the pigments powder on the page, and you can see a little smear of paint-dust in the upper left from where I brushed it away.
I wasn’t satisfied with just the one layer of paint, though, so I watered down the same pure pigment into a light wash and painted in the halo of tentacles, sprinkling salt carefully at the base of each one, which further affected the surface of the circle around the edges as well.
Tentacle Planet, 5″x5″ Japanese watercolor on Arches cover white paper.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Tentacles
Tags: brown, nfs, planet, salt, sold, tentacles, watercolor
1 Comment »
Salt Cell 2
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
Salt Cell 2 by Amy Crook
After exploring the combination of salt and watercolor last week, I picked up some larger crystals of sea salt. Wanting to do something else that echoed Salt Cell but incorporated some pen-and-ink work as well, I decided on a rather tedious methodology. The process affected the outcome because the paint began to dry before I was done putting the salt back on the little circles.
I think I might try it again, but with fewer salt crystals.
Salt Cell 2, 5″x5″ pen and ink and watercolor on watercolor paper, $229 with free shipping.
You can see more about how this piece came together below the cut.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art, Series and Books
Tags: for sale, pen and ink, purple, salt, watercolor
1 Comment »
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