Tag: contemporary art

This is the third image of this years Christmas painting. This is not a complicated work, so what you are seeing is the music. The last major item will be to add the word I have chosen for this music.  Since there is only one word that is not going to change the overall look of this artwork.  Once all the major elements are in place next up I will next need to add some decorative touches.  I’m going to do that to add interest,  and to fill neutral areas of canvas with something to catch the viewer’s eye. I do have those shaded lines in the background that could be use to add some Christmas spirit. I may look there first,  and then later drop in random snowflakes to fill in.  Those are my ideas for now, but that may change the minute I dip the brush into the paint.

I have spent a lot of time, since the finish of the Vivaldi’s series, trying to decide the real purpose of these artworks backgrounds. Since Music is sound,  and sheet music is only notation on blank paper, that leave open a lot of creative all options. What that means is that as the years go by, I see less evolution of how the music looks,  and more how I will display it.

Scott Von Holzen

 

This is the second image of Have yourself an interesting, and kind of special merry little Christmas, if you wish.  The enlarged image looks bright.  I had to turn around from this screen to take a second look at the painting on the easel.  I think it is the custom blue color,  I mixed for the music,  that is popping everything.

I wrote down five colors on my worksheet that I wanted to use for this work.  Those colors, nothing special, are green, blue, red, white, and gold.  I added the two white stripes over the reds, from the first image, for I thought in this way I could cover  the colors white and gold. I went with the all white to give this background that special Christmas look, and later pulled some gold across to increase the Christmastime appearance.

I had some difficulty with the shading of the lines that I  first carefully planned. I finally had to damp wiped it all off.  I then drew in loosely some curve lines, with a few straight to counter, as I move across the canvases. I ended up using the same colors for the stripping and the shading.  This did create an interesting effect on the background, but I am not sure exactly what I am trying to accomplish.  This may be an idea that may eventual evolve into something that represent some aspect of the music. For now what I see is not hurting the music,  so it is worth seeing where it can go.   The way this work is progressing I may be done in a couple of weeks, which would be a pleasant surprise.  What helps is that the structure of this artwork is simple.  If this work completes on time I can see this as a move towards an accelerated pace for development, and promotion in the near future. There may be some exciting times ahead,  although predicting the future may be better kept to oneself.

Here is a cover by Kelly Clarkson singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas:

 

Scott Von Holzen

 

 

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is the  theme for this years Christmas painting. When completed I will then put together a Christmas card to be sent to those who purchased a painting from me.  Inside that card will be a small canvas print of Have yourself a merry little Christmas, signed and numbered.

This music was first introduce to the public by the beautiful 21-year-old Judy Garland in the 1944 movie Meet Me in St. Louis.

Here is an equally beautiful and talented Christina Aguilera along with Brian McKnight:

This first image show the finish of the basic background.  What I mean by basic is that this step is about putting down paint across the artwork, with the goal of covering up much of the white canvas.  Next up,  I will be taking what I learned in the last artwork, and  break up the horizontal striping using curved and straight shaded lines  This will add some interest to the background, and may even enhance the sense of movement of the music across the artwork.

I have said this a in a number of my blog entries,  that a major goal of each of these paintings is to try to emulate the music the art is portraying. That is pretty hard to do with out sound. Previous efforts  by artists to depict music mostly as abstractions, I believe, have missed this point:  an artwork may be depicting a Mozart Sonata,  or it could as likely be a scenic image of a Kansas dust storm just before a thunderstorm.  For me musical art is not an abstraction, but something that is real, and that visually depicts each piece of music in a unique way that connects the art to the music.  All of these artworks work to represent that singular look, and  feel of that one piece of music.  The success of each of these artworks brings me closer to my goal of picturing music’s spontaneity, emotion, and uniqueness, in a static, and silent art form.

Scott Von Holzen