Category: Classic Rock

S_V_H Martha my Dear image 3

Published on by Scott Von Holzen
Martha my Dear on the table. Behind left is J S Bach Minuet in G major, followed by You were on My Mind, followed by a self-portrait date 1975, and up against the wall is Schindler’s List.

In this photo I am showing how the artwork could fit laid across the metal frame that I created to hold the six-foot canvas that is up on a canvas support. Behind this canvas is my previous artwork, Chopin’s Prelude.

The 20Watt Stereo system I developed for this art with more wiring left to do.

This is the stereo system that I put together to power the two four-inch speakers that will be mounted on the sides. All the parts to this amplifier have to be soldered and wired together. Each time I put together this stereo system, it is an emotional and tense operation. There are a lot of small precise soldering to be done. I have gotten better over time but each solder I attempt is a touchy moment. Hard to do considering my steady hand could use a hand. What allows me the opportunity to make such small connections is my near sightedness. To solder I remove my contacts, and put on my glasses. Then when soldering, I remove my glasses, put on protective lenses. This then allows my nearsightedness to focus clearly on what I am attempting to do. Even though I do not have the steadiest hand, I get it done. Much of yesterday involved planning, soldering and placement of the components on a board that will be installed on the backside of the artwork.

After using my original Blog Template for the last eleven years, I was told by this site’s support that my theme, Chaotic Soul, was no longer supported. After some research I found one free theme, Hemingway Rewritten, that was a glove fit with my original theme. I forgot that switching themes requires a bit of CSS (a program’s style sheet) to bring a theme up to the operational level I need it to be. I made some quick strides and will tweak this site’s look and functionality over the next few months. So it goes.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Martha my Dear, the Canvas image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This image of the music box, Martha my Dear, shows the 6 foot by 20 inches canvas and the first step in my process of painting this canvas. Below the canvas are the two stretched 12x16inch speaker box canvases. This background image turned out to be all wrong for this project. I applied a different technique for the background. That was an awful choice.

The background colors exist to appear only when I scrap away the top layer. Any specific design of the background colors is unnecessary. When I scratch, what I want to see is a diverse mixed of colors that add interest and contrast to the top layer of paint. A third rate abstraction style is all that is required to make that happen. But I choose fancy instead of practical, and this project fell off the easel.

This did not become blatantly obvious until after the music was applied. I did not apply the top layer of titanium white heavy enough, which allowed the background and the blacks to show through. Then I made things worse when I used a darker gray color for the words. I realized I needed to lighten and reduce the contrast of the canvas. What I had left to finish was the scratching of the top layer of paint. That went as expected, and the contrast of the art was softened but fell short of expectations. I sensed failure. I was looking at a canvas that needed to look like the Beatles album cover that contained the song, Martha My Dear, disc one, side two, first song. It did not.

The Beatles’ White Album is entirely white except for their name in a light gray. That is the template I originally wanted for this canvas. Here is my seventies copy of the White Album (lighten up to better represent its original look). Sadly, as a cash poor college student, I sold my original release album once I copied it to my reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Out of desperation I repainted over the existing words with layers of titanium white. I then repainted the words using a lighter gray. That improved the look, but the original background still existed under all this paint. That meant I could not re-scratch this top layer. Instead, I gazed over the canvas with light applications of white gesso. That was the softening technique that worked. The scratching still shows, but it is now white and white now dominates this canvas. When I placed samples of my music up against the canvas, that was the moment I knew I could now move on. So it goes.

(after taking this last image, I later applied a white glaze to soften the two speaker boxes)

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Martha my Dear first image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen1 Comment

This first image of Martha my Dear is of pile of music that I carefully built. Laid end-to-end the music is, oh! That measurement came to twelve feet, seen in the image below. Hum? From the start of this project the plan was to control the amount of music and therefore its length, knowing that the canvas was only 72 inches. Hum?

Warning! All the next stuff is kinda geeky. The main purpose of this blog is to document this art. Any entertaining value is strictly accidental. Besides, I would never want this art, these blog entries, or my videos to-go “viral,” This is out of fear of becoming a one-hit-wonder and/or bad timing for my eventual 15 minutes of fame option.

Anyway, what I have to work with is a roll of heavy primed canvas the length of six feet and my choice to cut the canvas at twenty inches in width. Luckily, I have two options, with one being building two connected six-foot canvases frames. Seems like a lot of work. Or, what I will do, which is to reduce the length of an artwork by meshing the music together.

Here then are three basic sketch ideas. Each of these resulted in a project length of around 102 inches. That is easily workable with the addition of the two speaker boxes attached on both ends of the canvas frame. These boxes will also be out front of the canvas, with music attached allowing the music on the canvas to slide under, reducing overall length. An example of this would be the left side of the last image of the Chopin Prelude music box.

This next image is my about time to move-on-lets-work-on-the-canvas-next.

But first here is my final “sketch” for this next music box. To add documentation, I rarely have done any drawing of any preliminary sketches for my music projects. I have several sketchbooks I used when I first started out as a portrait painter back in the 1970s. Since then, I have simply preferred photography over the pencil.

This last preliminary image shows I can attach all the music to a measured six feet by twenty-inch canvas, along with the added speaker boxes.

Scott Von Holzen