Wings of Victory the school fight song for Northwest Missouri State University.  It has taken two weeks to reach this stage of the background for this music. The University’s colors are green and white.  White leaves no options, so to create some interest and contrast I have mixed a lot, yes I mean a lot, of shades, and tints of different colors of green. This background has seen a number of changes, that I did not document.  Creativity is difficult using such a restrictive pallet, when I normally have used every color in the rainbow in most of my work. It has been s struggle to get this far with this background.  The schools green is a Pantone color of 342, which helps, but since it is a dark green, I have had to move towards lighter shades of green and yellow-green,  to give the artwork some life, that you certainly feel if you listen to the music.

Like the two paintings for Japan, I am out of my comfort zone with this work.  When I look at this painting and the similar size, unfinished work Take Five (scroll down two posts),  my challenge is clearly visible.  I can only do so much with green, and that is what I need to solve to create a special artwork that the University will be proud to display.

Wings of Victory:

This music is what I would expect for a University band school theme song.  It does its job quite well.  I need to figure out how to take the emotions of their fight song and translate it into this artwork.  That would be easier without color restrictions, but that is not an option.  My challenge is to punch up this artwork to show the emotions of the music. I can do some of that with the design of the artwork.  More important would be If I  can figure out some way to bounce the different shades of green off of the white.  A lot of different color contrasts would help the most to pump up the emotions of this artwork.

Today, I have finished putting in the flow of the music, and have colored it in.  I will post pictures and more tomorrow.

Scott Von Holzen