So at this point you have sketches (hopefully a number of sketches); and you may also have have photos. In addition you have your memory and your feelings AND YOUR BRAINS. As Cezanne says: "There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other" .
You have a desire to make a work of art based on related sensations you've experienced. You also have other works of art that may help shape your thoughts as well. And they are all with you now singing to you about creating a new work of art that expresses your own vision.
What next?
There are different ways to solve the mystery. One important thing you must do is work with and evolve your composition.
Composition means how you organize your work using all the elements of design. It means how will you use space, color, line shape, texture, surface, brush stroke, tone, value. For me size and mediums and materials are also a part of composition. Decisions about complexity and simplicity, about detail and completeness, and what's put in and what's left out also are part of composition. What is your theme and what are your motifs, your distinctive or recurring forms shapes or figures? What do you want to place emphasis on? What will the painting "say"? For me composition is everything.
--A painting that is well composed is half finished. (Pierre Bonnard)
So you will need to be open, and you will need to experiment to find the right path.
Below are some water color examples of Cezanne working with composition. He did many painting of this scene of Mont Sainte Victoire, in Aux In Provence France. Your name!
**Click images to enlarge**
A photo of Mount Sainte Victoire and a map of the walking trail Cezanne used:
****Click link below to see some school children's landscapes inspired by Cezanne:
Here's another example: Picasso sketches used to complete his masterpiece Guernico:
Guernico
Something I'm working on. A quick sketch with charcoal and crayons for Shenandoah. Just trying to get some ideas out of my system and on to paper (back of a grocery bag).
Shenandoah sketch
Using a computer:
A lot can be done with just paper, scissors, and pencil or charcoal; but the computer can be useful sometimes.
Using the Paint software program you can experiment with color relationships. Below is a quick charcoal drawing on grocery bags which I then photographed and loaded into the computer.This is a painting I've made many drawing for. Once you have a jpeg file to can work on it and try out some colors. Obviously you don't have to use a computer to test color. It's just convenient sometimes.
Using motifs from famous paintings and moving objects around with paper and scissors and with PowerPoint:
Agnolo Bronzino Venus
Titian Venus
Ingres Venus
Sketches for something I'm working on--Three Venuses
Using themes and motifs from the work of other artists. I tried placing the three figures in different positions.
I like this arrangement better -- Also-- moved the left and right Venus down to acheive more of a triangle composition.
Trying touches of red white and blue color. Using Paint program on a jpeg image saved from PowerPoint file.
You can tape sheets of paper to a board and work with charcoal to begin to make decisions about lines and shapes. You can also use gouache paint to see color combinations, and it's easy to clean up because it's water based. Of course you can also use pencil and watercolor, or crayons. Pastel too but it's messier and you need more room. I like using the A1 or A2 size paper. You can tape it together if you want it bigger.
Use what ever is comfortable to you-- pencil, pen, charcoal, crayon, brush.
Just wanted to get these thoughts down on doing a landscape painting. To see some of my favorite landscape paintings you can go to the earlier post "Landscape Painting Favorites." For this project I'd like for you to do a landscape painting of a scene along the Thames River.
This process has three main parts: 1. Collecting information, 2. Testing compositions and mediums, and 3. Solving the mystery.
I'd say I have an eclectic approach because I use various ways to complete this kind of project. I'll be talking about landscape painting, but this approach can be used for portrait of still life as well. Keep in mind there is no right or wrong way to create a work of art. As you create more you will find a way that works best for you.
In some ways creating a work of art is like solving a problem or a riddle, like breaking the code. Matisse, Pissarro, and Cezanne went about their work using some of these strategies, so you could say they are my role models.
First you need to find a place you desire to paint. It's important that you have a connection with the place, or have a history with this place. Maybe you want to be closer to the place, or maybe it wants to be closer to you. I'm thinking that a scene along the Thames might work for you.
Once you find the place you want to paint, you need to start collecting information. This can happen through one visit or through many visits.
There are many ways to collect information-- by sketching and drawing, through photography, through visual memory, through using your other senses; and through observing and borrowing from other paintings by other artists, and through literature and music, too. You could say that you're collecting your feelings about the place/scene you want to make a painting of -- both tangible and intangible feelings.
When making your sketches, try positioning yourself in different ways to obtain views of interest. Look not only for the overall view but also look for the selective deatil view. Look at the shapes, lines, and colors that make up the scene. Also think about how the sensory perceptions you have relate to your other senses--sound, smell, and touch. Use all of your senses to collect information, not just your eyes.
Have a good pencil at a minimum and a medium size sketch book with decent paper quality. You may also want to carry other drawing supplies including water colors. More on that later.
Here are a few examples of sketches:
Cezanne
Corot
Corot
Pissarro
Pissarro
Monet
A sketch I did in Scotland
Van Gogh
Boudin (sketch with water color)
Always remember to observe the light. That's very important. You are painting light. What is the quality of the light and how does the light change over time.
Train your eyes to see and remember the forms and colors. You can draw one branch, one tree, or a more complete view. Do quick sketches to capture your first impression. Remember the movement of your drawing hand and keep your eyes fixed on the light that reveals the images. Let the light of the view pass into your hand through your fingers. Now close your eyes and fix the natural image in your mind and in your imagination.
You can also take photographs. They can help you remember. You can pan the camera using overlapping frames so you can place the photos in panoramic positions later. Or use the camera to take a detail view of an object you want to study more. Here are a couple of photos I took with you at the Holy Trinity Church in Cookham.
And some photos of the Shenandoah Valley:
The point is to experience the location visually, mentally, and emotionally, Do not be too worried about compositional closure at this point. If composition ideas fall in place OK, but composition can come later.
When you finish you should have a notebook of sketches and maybe some photos too. Ideally you will visit the scene you want to paint more than once, perhaps many times and make more than one painting. Cezanne did that. But if you only get one visit collect as much information as you can and keep it safe, not only in sketches and photos, but also in your memory and in your heart and mind.
Artist Quotes:
- Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
Pablo Picasso
- Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
Pablo Picasso
- I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!
Pablo Picasso
- I dream of painting and then I paint my dream.
Vincent Van Gogh
- Painting is damned difficult - you always think you've got it, but you haven't.
Paul Cezanne
- Painting from nature is not copying the object; it is realizing one's sensations.
Paul Cezanne
- An artist must possess Nature. He must identify himself with her rhythm, by efforts that will prepare the mastery which will later enable him to express himself in his own language.
Henri Matisse
- A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.
Henri Matisse
Look carefully over this selection of self portraits done by well known artists. In doing these works, all of these artists were trying to reveal something about themselves.
Now you try your own self portrait using charcoal on paper. You can use a photograph of yourself, or perhaps better, use a mirror.
A genre of popular music originating in the 1950s; a blend of black rhythm-and-blues with white country-and-western; rock is a generic term for the range of styles that evolved out of rock'n'roll.
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources.
Musically, rock has centred around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music with a 4/4 beat utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style.
* R&B / Soul
A style of music developed by African Americans that combines blues and jazz, characterized by a strong backbeat and repeated variations on syncopated instrumental phrases.
Soul Music is a style of popular music developed by African Americans, combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues.
* Symphonic / classical
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. "Symphony" does not necessarily imply a specific form, though most are composed according to the sonata principle. Many symphonies are tonal works in four movements with the first in sonata form, which is often described by music theorists as the structure of a "classical" symphony, although many symphonies by the acknowledged classical masters of the form, Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven do not conform to this model.
* Jazz (many flavors)
Jazz is a musical tradition and style of music that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note (notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations).
* Blues
A style of music that evolved from southern African-American secular songs and is usually distinguished by a strong 4/4 rhythm, flatted thirds and sevenths, a 12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first:
* Folk
Music originating among the common people of a nation or region and spread about or passed down orally, often with considerable variation.Contemporary music in the style of traditional folk music.
* Bluegrass
In bluegrass, as in some forms of jazz, one or more instruments each takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment; this is especially typified in tunes called breakdowns. This is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Breakdowns are often characterized by rapid tempos, and unusual instrumental dexterity and sometimes complex chord changes.
Bluegrass music has attracted a diverse and loyal following worldwide. Bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe characterized the genre as: "Scottish bagpipes and ole-time fiddlin'. It's Methodist and Holiness and Baptist. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound."
* Country
A type of 20th-century popular music based on White folk music of the southeastern US Sometimes shortened to country. A form of popular music originating in the rural southern US. It is traditionally a mixture of ballads and dance tunes played characteristically on fiddle, guitar, steel guitar, drums, and keyboard.
* Gospel
A kind of Christian music based on American folk music, marked by strong rhythms and elaborated refrains, and incorporating elements of spirituals, blues, and jazz.
* Opera
a drama set to music; consists of singing with orchestral accompaniment and an orchestral overture and interludes
Comparing and contrasting music styles:
I Want to Hold Your Hand (Classic Rock / Pop)
V's audio notes on I Want to Hold Your Hand
Text Notes:
- In the key of G
- up tempo, lively 4/4 rock beat
- happy, uncomplicated, easy to understand lyrics
- sound timbre: vocals, electric guitar, hand claps, with a beat
- Two bridge structure
- The last part of each verse concludes in a mini refrain "I want to hold your hand, I want to hold your hand"
- Bridge shifts to minor V chord (Dm7); quieter passage and nice melody change with harmony; bridge ends with louder dynamic staccato emphasis "I can't hide" 3X (CCD) and resolves back to G major
- Has both unison and harmony singing
- does not have a lead guitar break
- retards and end with dynamic chord punches on the word "hand" CCCCCC G; gives strong sense of finality
1st Movement - Adagio (leisurely) - Allegro Molto (pretty quick)
V's comment: Listen for the three main themes and how they are developed and repeated throughout the first movement. Also listen to how the orchestra is used to achieve dynamics and changes in tonal color.
A video that shows the structure of the 1st Movement:
Lenard Bernstein discusses the complete symphony:
2nd Movement Largo (slow, dignified). Dvorák ’s tender tune shows how well he’d picked up American popular styles. It sounds like, but isn’t, a Negro spiritual. Much later, his tune was actually adopted as a spiritual (and given the title Goin’ Home).
3rd Movement Scherzo - molto vivace (very lively). Bright, bouncing tunes and snappy rhythms remind us of both sprightly Czech dances
4th Movement Allegro con fuoco (fast and fiery). Dvorák cuts loose in a big way, mixing stacks of great new tunes with ones we’ve already heard and leads to the climax of the coda.
Classic Rock & Classical
The Cream & Chopin
Blues and Bluegrass
Muddy Waters & Bill Monroe
Folk and Classical
Sandy Denny and William Walton (Crown Imperial March)
Blues and Folk
Classical, Jazz, R&B, and African Drumming
An example of polyphony
Jazz improvisation
Nice organ and piano accompaniment with tight horn arrangement. Strong medium tempo beat. Has gospel flavor.
Classical and Jazz
Jazz improvisation
Bluegrass and R&B
Bluegrass improvisation
Modern Pop and Modern Country
Structure of Only Exception
(Slow Tempo)
Intro (mainly acoustic guitar and electric piano)
1. Verse
2.Verse
Chorus (one line repeats 4x)
3.Verse (adds harmony and bass)
4.Verse
Chorus (with drums)
Short instrumental leads into Bridge
Vocal Bridge
Chorus repeats softer at first with only acoustic then builds to outro
Outro retads
Structure of Teardrops on My Guitar
(Slow Tempo)
Intro (with banjo and pedal steel guitar)
1. Verse (acoustic guitar and light beat song in whisper)
2. Verse (more banjo and pedal steel)
Chorus with harmony
3.Verse
Chorus
Guitar lead break
Half verse leads to chorus
Chorus
Repeat half of 1st verse sung quietly with less accompaniment and retard
Music Terms (from Wikipedia and online dictionaries):
Sonata Form
Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven developed the idea of sonata form. A movement in sonata form has three sections called: “exposition”, “development” and “recapitulation”.
In the exposition we hear all the main material: the first tune- or group of tunes - in the main key, then a contrasting tune or tunes in a related key (normally the “dominant” i.e. the key on the 5th note of the scale of the main key, or the relative minor). Or in the case of a first section in a minor key, one might frequently hear the second subject or subjects in the relative major.
In the development section the music is developed, going into several different keys. The music here feels unstable. There is a feeling of tension. The listener wants to get back to the main key.
In the recapitulation the exposition is repeated, but it changes towards the end so that it finishes in the main key. It feels as if the tension has gone and the listener feels happy.
This way of building a piece of music was used by almost every composer from the mid 18th century onwards – well into the 20th century. It gives scope for a very dramatic piece.
Texture
In music, texture is the way the melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition (Benward & Saker 2003, 131), thus determining the overall quality of sound of a piece. Texture is often described in regards to the density, or thickness, and range, or width between lowest and highest pitches, in relative terms as well as more specifically distinguished according to the number of voices, or parts, and the relationship between these voices (see types of texture below) (Benward & Saker 2003, 131). A piece's texture may be affected by the number and character of parts playing at once, the timbre of the instruments or voices playing these parts and the harmony, tempo, and rhythms used.
The types categorized by number and relationship of parts are analyzed and determined through the labeling of primary textural elements: primary melody (PM), secondary melody (SM), parallel supporting melody (PSM), static support (SS), harmonic support (HS), rhythmic support (RS), and harmonic and rhythmic support (HRS) (Benward & Saker 2003, p.136).
Timbre
In music, timbre ( /ˈtæmbər/ TAM-bər or /ˈtɪmbər/; French: [tɛ̃bʁ]) is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that mediate the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope. In psychoacoustics, timbre is also called tone quality and tone color. For example, timbre is what, with a little practice, people use to distinguish the saxophone from the trumpet in a jazz group, even if both instruments are playing notes at the same pitch and loudness. Timbre has been called a "wastebasket" attribute (Dixon Ward, 1965) 55) or category (Tobias 1970, 409), or "the psychoacoustician's multidimensional wastebasket category for everything that cannot be qualified as pitch or loudness" (McAdams and Bregman, 1979).
Polyphony, polyphonic
Music with two or more independent melodic parts sounded together; the combination of a number of separate but harmonizing melodies, as in a fugue.
Back beat A sharp rhythmic accent on the second and fourth beats of a measure in 4/4 time, characteristic of rock music.
Poly rhythm - different rhythm patterns played together
Syncopation
A shift of accent in a passage or composition that occurs when a normally weak beat is stressed. Something, such as rhythm, that is syncopated. The displacement of the usual rhythmic accent away from a strong beat onto a weak beat; a note, beat, rhythm, etc., produced by syncopation
Improvisation
The process of spontaneously creating fresh melodies over the continuously repeating cycle of chord changes. Refer to jazz videos above by Miles Davies and McCoy Tyner.
When a composer writes aforteinto a part, followed by apiano, the intent is for the music to be loud, and then suddenly quiet. If the composer wants the change from one dynamic level to another to be gradual, different markings are added. Acrescendo(pronounced "cresh-EN-doe") means "gradually get louder"; adecrescendoordiminuendomeans "gradually get quieter".
Tempo
Basic tempo markings
All of these markings are based on a few root words. By adding an -issimo ending the word is amplified/made louder, by adding an -ino ending the word is diminished/made softer, and by adding an -etto ending the word is endeared. The metronome marks are broad approximations. Note: Metronome markings are a guide only and depending on the time signature and the piece itself, these figures may not be appropriate in every circumstance.
Larghissimo — very, very slow (20 bpm and below)
Grave — slow and solemn (20-40 bpm)
Lento — very slow (40–60 bpm)
Largo — very slow (40–60 bpm), like lento
Larghetto — rather broadly (60–66 bpm)
Adagio — slow and stately (literally, "at ease") (66–76 bpm)
Adagietto — rather slow (70–80 bpm)
Andante — at a walking pace (76–108 bpm)
Andante Moderato — a bit faster than andante
Andantino – slightly faster than andante
Moderato — moderately (101-110 bpm)
Allegretto — moderately fast (but less so than allegro)
Allegro moderato — moderately quick (112–124 bpm)
Allegro — fast, quickly and bright (120–139 bpm)
Vivace — lively and fast (˜140 bpm) (quicker than allegro)
Vivacissimo — very fast and lively
Allegrissimo — very fast
Presto — very fast (168–200 bpm)
Prestissimo — extremely fast (more than 200bpm)
Additional Terms:
A piacere — the performer may use his own discretion with regard to tempo and rhythm; literally "at pleasure"
L'istesso tempo — at the same speed
Tempo comodo — at a comfortable (normal) speed
Tempo di... — the speed of a ... (such as Tempo di valse (speed of a waltz), Tempo di marcia (speed of a march))
Tempo giusto — at a consistent speed, at the 'right' speed, in strict tempo
Tempo semplice — simple, regular speed, plainly
Coda
Coda (Italian for "tail", plural code) is a term used in music in a number of different senses, primarily to designate a passage that brings a piece (or one movement thereof) to a conclusion.
Fugue
An imitative polyphonic composition in which a theme or themes are stated successively in all of the voices of the contrapuntal structure. (Music / Classical Music) a musical form consisting essentially of a theme repeated a fifth above or a fourth below the continuing first statement.
Etude
From the French word etude (to study). A piece composed for the development of a specific point of technique. A composition featuring a point of technique but performed because of its artistic merit.
Counterpoint
Melodic material that is added above or below an existing melody. The technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such a way that they establish a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality.
