Exercise 17 - Abstract Illustration

This exercise asked us to listen to a piece of music by one of the named artists. I chose Beethoven and listened to a few of his tracks. The one which I felt drawn to the most and chose to represent was "Fur Elise". I started this exercise in my sketchbook listening to the music and making marks as I worked.
I must admit I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing at this point but just set about going with the flow of the music and trying to represent the different elements.

 

I experimented with inks and tried letting them run into each other and tried spreading them out with a pen and letting it run.

I quite liked some of these effects but wasn't sure if I was totally following the brief and getting a true representation of what the music meant to me.

I then worked on a large sheet and made some more marks , selecting different combinations of materials and colours which I felt represented the tonal qualities of the music. The marks I made were flowing and spirally at times as the music dipped and then would gather momentum.
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The next part involved selecting a word that represents the tone of the piece and select an area and work into this further. I chose "Dynamic" and continued to work on mark making.
I then decided to try work on these with Photoshop and playing with filters and colour variations and I managed to create some interesting combinations.
We then could add in form to our image and I had the idea to try and make a representational shape of Beethoven and have it showing through the marks. I used Layer masks to create some interesting effects and used the shape outline from a photograph of Beethoven.
I quite liked some of these effects but got to thinking about what my tutor had advised and based on things I'm reading/ learning that sometimes less is more and I wasn't sure if these looked overworked.
I tried to consider could this by used for a CD cover type illustration as I worked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not entirely satisfied I re - read the brief and decided to work more freehand and create some marks/ shapes again to represent the music. The ones I came up with looked in a similar style to Miro and I thought these more effective as I introduced different elements which I thought portrayed the music.
I then scanned my drawings and did some colour adjustments with Photoshop and added some text to see how well it would potentially work if it was used as a CD cover.

I liked these images a lot better and think they're stronger than some of the earlier colour / texture pieces.
This was a useful exercise at practising my Photoshop techniques but also made me hone in my experimentation and stick to something slightly simpler which I think was more effective.

I've just had my feedback from my 2nd assignment and might try some more alternative colour palettes and experimented with some different colour palettes.