S_V_H Fine and Mellow image3

fine&Mellow_4

Fine and Mellow has been slowly coming together. The words for this artwork are, ‘love so fine.’  Billie’s words are, “He’s so fine and mellow.”  I have filled, with a few extra pieces of music, that colorful bowl on the far right, that ties the music.  Also, I would have liked the music flow, the circles, to have been larger to fill more of the background space. I did enlarge the  music from my original plans, but that had it limits.  What I have done since this image above, is in the spaces between the music, I have added extra stripping. Hopefully this adds interest, and improves the feel of a dark, imaginative, smokey bluesy atmosphere, of this artwork.

The pace of this artwork has been so slow, because much of my free time, my artist time,  has lately been consumed by practice, not my drawing skills, but expanding my musical skills. My artistic focus is music. Music to listen to, music to be painted, and now music to be played, on the piano, the alto saxophone, the violin, and the blues guitar.

The violin  is new to me, this last spring. I eventually see it playing Classical music.  The alto saxophone, also new a month or so ago, it is my Jazz instrument.  The blues guitar, came out of nowhere when I heard of the death of B. B. King.  I did play the folk guitar in college, so I have some history with the guitar, but playing the Blues, where all American music begins, will be my newest experience with music. The Last instrument is the piano. I have played a little keyboard, on an off for years, starting at the age of 7 years with the accordion.  My thinking is the piano is to key to understanding music theory, and is the instrument that, for me, brings everything about music together. The piano plays it all from B. B. King to Vivaldi.

Fine and Mellow is near completion, for I really do not know what else I can do with this painting. I would like to do more with it, but I am not sure what.  That means, pretty much as is,  I will have a final image out in a couple of days.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Fine and Mellow image2

fine&Mellow_3This second image of Fine & Mellow shows the music, painted using brighter colors, to separate it from the background. Different from my original thinking, this painting is not going to be a visual of a black and white video.  Instead the colors in this artwork are my emotional reaction to the video: the contrast of light and dark, and what I am seeing and hearing in the back-en-forth between the sounds from the musicians, and Billie Holiday’s voice. It turns out that a darker lower contrast artwork was just a first reaction to watching the video for the first time.

My first big color move came from the words  “He wears high draped paints_ Stripes are really yellow,”  which shows in the stripping of the beams.  Actually knowing my art,  how could I have left out bright yellow out of this artwork. That logical move changed everything.

Scott Von Holzen

S_V_H Fine and Mellow image1

Fine and Mellow words and music by Billie Holiday.  This performance on live TV in 1957 was all I needed to convince me to paint this music. In this video  Billie Holiday sings Fine and Mellow  accompanied by Ben Webster, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, all on tenor saxophone, Vic Dickenson on trombone, Gerry Mulligan playing the baritone saxophone, Roy Eldridge and Doc Cheatham both on trumpet, Danny Barker on  guitar, Milt Hinton plays double bass, while Mal Waldron is on piano and Osie Johnson plays the drums. These are a lot of great jazz musicians all backing up Billie Holiday.

 

fine&Mellow_1

This early image of Fine and Mellow shows the original medium magenta stripping, after the first re-taping where I reduced the strip size by a half, to try to tone down its impact on the background. This thinning of the line helped, but the strip was simply not dark enough to fit the mood of the video.  In a change from many of my earlier works I decided to paint both the top and bottom white strip in shades of dark purple. Seeing how the purple appeared to work out, I once again re-taped the magenta strips and painted over them with a purple wash, which finally resulted in the background the mood I was looking for.

fine&Mellow_2Up next is the music. For the music my original thoughts where to use brighter colors to contrast with the background. Now, I am thinking differently. This is a rare black and white video of Billie Holiday singing a blues song, so to keep with the atmosphere of that music I have decided against any sharp separation of the music from the background.  Instead, I am going to try to create the effect of the music moving back-en-forth into the background,  and then swinging back out to the forefront of the artwork.

Scott Von Holzen