painting to music | The Contented Crafter

2:1

Easel 1 June

2:2

2:3

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2:4

The soaring notes of the Lacrymosa of Mozart’s Requiem reverberated through the room. Orlando fled – he’s not a fan of the classics. Siddy looked vaguely interested then settled onto his chair with his teddy bear and a sigh. I looked at my paints. The metallics looked back at me and I chose first bronze, then gold and turned to the easel.

Using my fingers I stroked long bands of bronze around the top and right edges and dragged and smudged them into the canvas. It looked too heavy to me, so I swapped for the gold. Gold is a go to metallic in any of my paintings – it sparkles and shines and I love it. My finger traced stripes of gold around the blocks of colour, slowly, quietly as the music filled the room. As the music moved into the Domine Jesu I finished laying down the gold and turning, picked up the white and began to paint random circles and spirals and somehow found myself enclosing them with black paint. By the time I was done with that the Sanctus was reverberating around the room and I picked up the metallics again and built them up some more, allowing the colour to bleed over and blend into the circles.

There was no dancing today and I’m not at all sure about those black marks – we’ll see what tomorrow brings!

Any thoughts to share?

Thanks for coming by today I love that you did!

Hello! So, day two dawned and I stood before the easel and gazed with horror at the mess….

Easel 1 June

But as I looked I could see that the random choice of music had had a fair bit of influence over what appeared. I decided to see what the gods of random chance would fling my way today so Spotify was turned on and I waited – somewhat trepidatiously (is that a word?) and Leonard Cohen’s voice floated through the room, inviting me to dance him to the end of love. Without thinking and swaying along with the music I applied a thin coat of gesso over the entire painting, knocking back the vibrancy but still allowing some of the colour to show through. Then I was stumped – where to now?

My eyes fell on the buckets of journal inspiration sticks and I reached forward and grabbed at one. It said ‘Write at least three random words somewhere’ So I picked up the green paint lying on the palette from working in my art journal and wrote big, random words over the canvas. And being somewhat of a wordy person, why stop at three words when there is room for so many more – I wrote six of my favourites and, as there was still paint left over, the green mixed with some blue made random circles between those lovely words.

Here’s a close up so you can see what’s happening

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I cleaned the brushes and walked away just as the 2 Cello boys began to play ‘Benedictus’ – don’t you love the mad vibrancy of these two young musicians?

Your thoughts?

Thanks for coming by today I love that you did!