Category: christmas

Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree image 1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

To my surprise, Rockin’ Around the Christmas tree, is my thirteenth Christmas time painting. That is a lot of artwork time spent in the later part of the year, when I am not into Christmas music at Christmas time.  Instead I prefer an occasional Christmas song in the summer time.  For me Christmas music in July, is a diversion away from in-the-moment pop music, or when I am drowning in boredom from my own, aging playlists.  Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, sung by Brenda Lee, represents one of those great Summer Christmas songs, that will lift your spirit, and cool your temperature.

This artwork consists of two eight by sixteen inch canvasses, in a metal frame with a pearl colored background that does not portray well in the image. The music will be mostly in a Cobalt blue that worked well in the 2016 Christmas painting, Ave Maria.  A canvas image of this artwork will appear in this years Christmas card.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Silver Bells final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

Silver Bells this years Christmas artwork and the canvas print for my 2017 Christmas card is finished.  This work turned out to be a more  demanding and creative Christmas painting, than earlier years. Past Christmas artworks I kept the look and style predictable and functional to save time and stress because of the obvious deadline. Of course. Silver Bells did not turn out that way.

The result will be the same with this artwork as with the past Christmas works, which is that Silver Bells will become the newest member of my Christmas Club artworks soon to be quickly forgotten after the Holidays.

For now Silver Bells is where my art is at. It’s major influence is my earlier work, Runnin’ Down a Dream. You see that in the wide stems, and in the mix of colors.  Typical with my Christmas artworks I made use of metal paints, but even more so with Silver Bells.  I like their bright shiny Christmas look. Interesting,  I did a little practice glazing of the blue strips on the stems.  That doesn’t show well in the image, but this is something I will try again, and could be a possible step forward.

The words Ring and ring of course kinda throws this artwork in a different perception direction.   My original choice  was Silver Bells, but I decided to shake the tree instead.

That is it for Silver Bells. Next up something fun and different, that I know,  once I figure out what that would be.

Actually, I know exactly what I am going to paint. I am going back to my rock ‘n roll roots, with Bob Seger’s great Like a Rock:

 

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Silver Bells image 1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

Silver Bells is this years Christmas Painting. My original plan was to produce a mini-Christmas artwork probably about one foot in length.  I ended up choosing a larger 8 inch by 24 inch in length canvas,  with no clear reason other than I forgot my original plan.

Using a larger canvas with such a small amount of music, better suited for a mini artwork, cause me to look for ways to fill up some space. Well, as you can see, with much effort, I covered the background using large pieces of wood.  Because of their length and size of all this extra wood, I had issues with keeping a balanced look. What I did to balance the work, with the third group of two notes,  I turned the stems  down instead of the more normal up. Than with the fourth two note group, I turned my tie, that boxy object covering the notes, also down, instead of doing a more normal above the music curve wood piece. I would have not done any of this if I had stuck with the original plan, but here I am. To move on to the fun parts of this music, I am going to cover all those large plain-looking pieces of wood with a lot of  strips and shapes. When finished Silver Bells will be a bright, colorful, and undeniable another unmarketable Christmas painting.

Here is a Classic 1950’s version of Silver Bells, with Bob Hope as a mischievous Santa Clause, and that includes a dated insensitive action at 1:18, Ho! Ho!

I  angled the stems of the music back-en-forth as a symbol for a ringing bell.  Originally, I was going with Silver Bells  for the artworks words, but  realized that I had another sentence I could use : “Ring-a-ling,  hear them ring.”  The words Ring, ring, balance nicely, and are more fun visually, so that is the direction I am heading.

Scott