Category: Music

S_V _H Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – Winter Allegro Mvt 3 image1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

WinterAllegro3Image2 Vivaldi’s Winter Allegro consists of  eight canvases that vary from 15 by 30 inches to 36 by 48 inches in size. This is the eleventh in the series of thirteen artworks of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Again in these images I am not capturing the look of this work. They look flat in contrast and color.  You have to see this work in person  to believe this difference. Looking at this completed background what I see is what I am living in: the chill of winter. At 17 feet in length and three feet high, standing close to this work all that is missing is the chill in the air that makes each breath feel razor-sharp.  Standing near this work it is winter, no matter the season.

Up next is putting down the musical flow.  I will using three different blues not used so far: light Blue Permanent, Light Ultramarine blue, and Brilliant Blue, and for the edges I will be using Turquoise Deep.

atLastJan29th

I thought I would put this image in this post that I took to send to a potential customer.  This is the great At Last that I painted back in May of 2010.  Hopefully, it will find a home in California.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V _H Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons – Winter Allegro Mvt 3 image1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

WinterAllegro3Image1

This is the eleven in the series of thirteen paintings picturing the musical works of four Antonio Vivaldi’s popular concertos: RV 269, RV 315, RV 293,  RV 297, which together make up The Four Seasons. This huge artwork, over 17 feet in length, was tough to photograph, but I needed to document the visual progress, and this first photo fulfills that need. Turning around and looking at the real artwork, it is much prettier in person, and already presenting a dramatic image.

In the photograph you are not seeing the contrast between the stripping and the background where I first spread a light gray layer.  Over that I then pulled across multiple thin layers of pure white.  I am using an image of pure white snow, in this artwork, for we have received plenty of that, lately. My challenge, with this work,  is to display this feeling of fresh snow cover across the entire seventeen feet of canvas that is Winter Allegro, creating diversity and multiple areas of interest.

Starting with a light gray background gives me the contrast to build up an image on white canvas.  Somehow I will use this same technique for the rest of the bare canvas, and besides using gray,  I will need to find ways to  add color in the background.  Lately, with my backgrounds I have used a lot of stripping for its musical effects and interest adding looks,  and that should work here by using cold blues mixed with a lot of white.  I have used so much white that I ran out of it, and had to pick up some locally, 40% off, of course.

The capturing of that winter feeling, for this artwork, is a lot easier to do while living in the season. Actually, I try to do that as much as I can with this series.  For example my last Vivaldi was the last movement of Autumn, and now I am, of course, working on the first movement of Winter.  When  I compete this work, next up will be the first movement of Spring, followed by the final artwork in this series, the third movement of Summer, sometime this summer.

Up next, I am turning around getting up from my computer, putting on my apron, and hopefully before nights end covering up the rest of the white canvas with white paint.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Vivaldi’s Autumn allegro 3rd mvt. final image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

Autumn3AllegroFinal

This is a studio final image of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Autumn Allegro.  This thirteen foot canvas has a busy and interesting look.  Usually, I spend multiple days cleaning, and touching up a painting, but strange this work took only needed a couple of days work to add the finish look. The most tedious part was the painting and finishing up of the words.  There was a lot of a’s and c’s that required an effort so that they appeared similar to each other. There was some concern about all the bluish notes, thinking maybe they where too cold looking, so I countered that with the browns on the four raised panels.  Since this is late autumn, at least where I live, it can get very cold, so the use of violet is a valid late fall color.  I then made an effort to put more late fall colors back into the work with the stems and the beams of the music. Some of the odd fall colors including the color green, are there to simply pop out parts of the work, and to add color interest.

Usually, I can just turn around and take a look at the finish work as I type, but I have already removed it from the easel, so that I could prep the canvases for the next Vivaldi which is Winter Allegro. My prepping of the canvases is applying three layers of gesso, and I have no other room but next to my easels to do this, so out the Autumn Vivaldi had to go to avoid splashing it with white paint. I am going to wire this artwork so that I can hang it in our living room, removing a favorite of mine Spring Danza Pastorale.

I spent two nights figuring out how to arrange the canvases, to best work with the music.  Finally, after multiple changes and verification of my math,  and the switching out of the far right canvas to a much smaller 30 by 24, to create a better balance, it is time to blot and screw all the pieces together.

Scott Von Holzen