Tag: Whitney Houston

This image shows the most difficult part of this music theme.  I could have saved a lot of time by using a third canvas to place this music on. I did not want to.  That would have made this music too typical by sitting on top of another piece of  boring canvas background.  I like the effect and the challenge of letting great music float about and around the background. Doing this brings this art form closer to  representing the fluid movement of music.   Still, the canvases stabilize the music, make the artwork portable, and give a neutral back drop. That makes them useful. For now,  I am going to let it stay that way.

The requested colors for this artwork are turquoise and brown.  That combination would not be a first choice.  I started by painting the canvases a medium brown. I did not like that look. Brown is not a color I associate with the unrequited love theme. I painted over the brown using different shades of turquoise. Visually, that worked better.  For the music I used a different brown that I  applied in transparent layers. I still would like to cut the overall impact of the turquoise background.  I could do that by using different shades of brown and small pieces of brighter accent colors.

So it goes.

Scott Von Holzen

This is a commissioned work based on the theme I will Always Love you,  a song, written by Dolly Parton but made famous by Whitney Houston. I didn’t think much of this song, that is until I watched the video. For  reasons beyond music a good video can change a good song into a block buster.  Check it out and see what I mean:

They owners of this artwork requested the colors brown and turquoise.  At first I painted the canvases a brown look,  and that failed measurably: I could not see the color brown as a great love song color being sung by a woman.  Maybe,  I needed a different brown,  but I decided to cut-my-loses and repainted the canvas using short vertical strokes off different shades of turquoise. After drying I realize that because of music those lines needed to be horizontal, so I repainted the canvases with longer horizontal stripping.  That did work.  Than, I still needed the color brown, as requested, and I decided to use the color brown for the music. I did change my first brown choice from Burnt Umber light to a more transparent Brown Iron Oxide.  With this brown choice I had better control by being able to apply in layers.

I needed  the colors brown and turquoise to dominated this artwork, but I felt that such a combination was out of my comfort zone.  Judging from past experiences I knew such things is what commissioned works do. They always challenge, with the benefits being both educational and inspirational.

Scott Von Holzen