Tag: ART

S_V_H After The Gold Rush Final Art image

Published on by Scott Von Holzen2 Comments
36 inches in height by 72 inches.

This is the finished artwork for After the Gold Rush art project.  Before starting the artwork, I first created an arrangement of the music.  I then sampled it as seen in this artwork.  To complete this project, I will work with my arrangement to create the soundtrack.  I have already purchased the mechanical license for this music, which of course is still under copyright.  I have the metal frame from Woodstock, so I will only need to put the stereo amplifier together, and then install the soundtrack.  Once all that is complete I will post a video of my arrangement

For this artwork, I wanted to make the music as large as possible.  I did that but ended up with both the top and bottom lengths being 32 notes.  That left little spacing between the notes.  That raised a long time concern about fitting my music in a restricted amount of space. 

This has been an issue from the beginning of this art.  That is why I would first set the music out on the canvas on a table before attaching it.  Since I am still in a small temporary studio, the only table large enough for this artwork is the ping-pong table on the lower floor.  Because of the softness of the top layer caused by the scratch technique, and not wanting the distress of moving the canvas with the music attached, I decided against using a table.  I felt I could better align and assemble the music with the canvas safely attached to a  six-foot by four-foot stretched canvas on the easel.  I had tested these same steps on the previous and smaller Christmas painting. 

I taped a string along the top of the easel so I knew exactly where to place the top of the note’s stems.  In this way, my arrangement had the correct up and down.   Then excited to make sure all the notes fitted before the glue dried, I quickly attached the music, which comprised four sample sections.  This well-documented concern caused me to forget to place the middle sections on different planes from the end pieces.  I simply forgot to run another string.  When I had finished, the top section I soon realized this error.  I was beyond the time where I could safely remove any of the music without tearing away the top layer of paint.  At first, I thought I would have to do the bottom layer also in one straight line, as I have done with most of my artworks over the years.  This time I choose not to continue down that well-worn path.  I move the bottom to two middle sections, one up and one down, and added some words along the artwork bottom to fill in as interest.  

This video tells the rest of the story:

As I am writing this, I have sandwiched up this artwork and others between cardboard for safe travel.  I have begun the slow removal of my temporary artist studio from a room that makes a better home office.

This is my 649th blog post.  As I have mentioned one goal of the blog was to match the number of letters Vincent Van Gogh sent to his brother Theo Van Gogh, 651. 

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H After the Gold Rush Image 2

Published on by Scott Von Holzen1 Comment

Wow! I am still shocked by the look after I do a scratch-off.  I know the results are, by now, predictable, and yet the scratching brings so much movement and life to the artwork, that it still amazes me.  This method keeps proving that it works, although that also still surprises me.   Of course with each project, some results I cannot control and those are not surprising.

This artwork had the issue with a lot of tiny breaks in the topcoat before scratching.  These little cracks in the surface paint have existed from work to work, although in this project they seemed excessive. That is something I would like to see less off.  I have an idea that the use of too much water when applying the topcoat may be causing more of these tiny cracks to be appearing.  In some areas in the middle, I did not like the placement of the words, so I painted them over which did fill cracks.   Then later, when I took a pallet knife to the topcoat, those thicker paint areas proved to be rubber-like and difficult to get any smooth flowing scratching.  You can see a few spots across the middle that the pallet knife resulted in the unexpected pulling of the paint. Thicker topcoats did not seem to be an issue in the past, but this time the extra coats were applied after the original topcoat had dried.  I did see that slightly curved horizontal lines created with a narrow head pallet knife, instead of using zig-zagging worked better for this artwork.  Finally, For the most part, I liked the effect of the background layer that shows through. This time I used a small roller to apply the background colors.  This technique is reminiscent of earlier artworks.  This look certainly may work for a future topcoat.

Here is what the background image for After the Gold Rush looks like:

The words I use and how I use them are different from others.  Again, I did not think it was worth my time to finely define the look of the lettering like I have consistently done in the past (from 2011).  The saving of Time and my changing approach to creating artworks (no longer relying on a craft approach to gain Artwork World respect) means the words and how they are used defines this art.  How they have crafted (I hide my craft), or how pretty they are adds no other virtue.  Like fine craftmanship, other artworks that display words, use words as a prop to shield their lack of originality.  In this art, the words, the art, and the music are bound together, with each enhancing the other.  That is a big difference.   And besides, after scratching what’s left is for you to figure out.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H After the Gold Rush image 1

Published on by Scott Von Holzen

This is the first image of After the Gold Rush. Nothing special here. All I am doing is giving the base layer some interesting color instead of leaving a blank sheet of white. Lately, all of my first images have been this type of entry level art. This image will soon disappear under the top coat until I take a pallet knife and scrap away at top layer.

Because I need an arrangement before I plan out a new artwork, here it is:


Later I will upgrade this music in my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) software. After finishing the artwork, I will build the stereo system and install the music with the completed artwork.

Here is a YouTube video of After the Gold Rush sung by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt, on the David Letterman show. When I first heard this cover on Spotify, I know that someday I would paint this music. It then became a matter of catching me in the mood. That is why I don’t do commission work.

Scott Von Holzen