A little introduction to those that have not seen something fun I started doing last week; painting with music. Taking different style of music and painting something using the feelings you get from the music and even sometimes matching the layered sounds in the song and applying it to the canvas.
A couple years ago while finding new music I stumbled upon something interesting and mellow. If you know any part of me, you'll know country is not my thing. I can't stand it, but this new music I was listening to was actually pretty good, and well guess what. It's actually dark country. I never knew there was such a thing, and there are very few good ones amongst them, still, do not put a cowboy hat on me, I'll burn it.
Here is the first song that I put on to start painting:
My first inital thought was to paint something to do with a river. Naturally because of the song but I don't think my skills are good enough to paint a river in the style I wanted and also I have been painting trees lately (not in these series) and it's the only thing I can think of that goes with a river aside from rocks.
In the song the chorus lyrics are : "Oh my Lord take this soul lay me at the bottom of the river. The Devil has come to carry me home lay me at the bottom... the bottom of the river"
We all interpretate songs differently and accordingly to our own emotions and experience. It does give a pirate feeling to me but it also makes me think of someone that has been hurt so deep that now that person has turned to evil, going by the lyrics "Evil will come if you call my name, the wicked day shall rise" and then wanting to be washed from sins, hence the lyrics that follow that. So in this case this person is a woman in my painting. I still wanted water somehow and with following the music, the image came to.
On a small canvas like this I had to draw it out to make sure measurements work. They may not be on point but I think its alright. Next step was planning my colours and having to figure out how to do it! I have drawn eyes aplenty but never painted them, and never have I drawn nor painted water before. Next I painted the canvas white as I couldn't think of anything better for a background.
Woah! Wait a minute! Red? Yes red! And with red being in all 3 paintings it would seem I don't have many colors in my pallet. I have all sorts of colors but I'm not there yet, so yes red, I want the red and red is very significant in this painting, you'll see why in a bit. I wanted the blue to create the contrast color instead of white. You can see that I tried making a different shade of red to mix in for the water look but I wasn't feeling it.
Next song:
This is one of my favorites, so much so that I even wrote a short story with it in a post some time ago.
"Save me if you can, the time for me has come, let me be the one that god away" Strong words! And matches everything I'm doing in the painting and if anything, it enhances it.
Ok, not so great water look. Man oh man is it ever hard to paint water when not knowing how to do it! But I tried. The hardest was to differentiate the front part of the splash and the back part to make it look circular. I think I somewhat made it work but I totally lack something of that whatever it may be to get it right.
I took a long time on this area trying different things, painting over what I didn't like, repairing, trying...So long that another song started playing.
On to the next part of the painting:
The reason for the eye is that we see hurt a lot in eyes, mirrors of our souls inside. We can always smile to hide away our deepest emotions but the eyes always tell the truth. Because of this I was actually nervous to paint it! If you could only see me painting, I brought the canvas close to my eyes as though I was almost blind and carefully applied the black.
Just so you know, I have never been one to apply color when I used to draw, it would always be in shading. And with never painting eyes before and applying color this was quite stressful, but I think I got it ok. Here is the look with the water splash:
It does look complete in this image but having just an eye and a splash is weird. So time to do the final touch. I was almost praying that I don't screw up at this point.
And here you have it! The reason for the splash! So back to why I used red; because shes in pain, when you are truly in emotional pain it doesn't just hurt your heart, it hurts your very being, mind, body and soul and when you cry with that much hurt, you cry your blood.
I also purposely painted a small tear drop. As a woman (all different but for me in this case), I try to keep strong and so if there is a tear at all, it is only a small amount, show no weakness. The splash is big because of the immense impact that pain has.
Here you have all 3 paintings from this series.
Let me know what you think of this one and tell me what you would have done differently for the water splash, or something else even. I look for growth in all my journeys.
