Brief#1
“Listen to a piece of instrumental music by a musician such as:
- George Gershwin
- The Gypsy Kings
- Beethoven
- Miles Davis
As you listen to the music create marks which convey your interpretation of the essence or mood of the piece. Work quickly and intuitively to bring a degree of self-expression to the exercise. Be selective in your use of materials, colours, marks and textures.”
My chosen musician was “The Gipsy Kings” and the song I listened to was “Bamboleo”. Below is the first image I created whilst listening to the song:
This was a very new method for me, and I wasn’t really sure whether I was expressing onto the canvas correctly. I guess that this is what my mind conjured up from the musical experience, but I found myself almost trying to be more obscure than I usually would, knowing that this is an abstract piece.
Brief#2
“Stand back from your worksheet and choose an adjective or word that you feel describes the tone of the piece. This is your interpretation and not a definition of it. Go through your drawings and choose a square area that you feel communicates the meaning of your chosen word and has visually interesting qualities.”
Below is the cropped part of the image which I chose the word “Heated” to represent:
As I was listening to the song, I was visualising a flame getting bigger. The voice of the lead singer starts quite soft and then opens up for the chorus.
Using this cropped image as a starting block, I began to reproduce the image with my adjective word in mind. While still listening to the song, created the image below:
I used my visualisation of flames from a fire being separated from each other but occupying the same space. Like the song, I tried to create a sense of something growing, becoming more fierce, but with accents of lighter colours that highlight the structure of the song. To create this piece, I used a digital Gouache and oil brush. I think the two different types of textures the brushes create added some depth to the final version.
Below I added a title to show what this piece might look like as a CD cover:
To keep the flow of the image, I made a copy of the image layer, added the font and created a clipping mask to fill the text with the original image. I think this gives the text a uniform and doesn’t take too much away from the artwork.
Conclusion:
I enjoyed getting out of my comfort zone for this exercise. Putting my brain on autopilot and seeing what spills out was exciting and harder than I thought. This being my first ever abstract piece, I am quite pleased with the results.