Brahms' German Requiem Part 2

Completed at last! Its only taken the best part of four months to complete this 70 x 50 cm work on a sheet of 300 gsm Fabriano5 paper. Black ink line drawing with FW acrylic inks for the more painterly aspects.
This is part of the art/music project. This piece is titled "Brahms' German Requiem, second stanza". The stanza is part two of a nine-part work. I intend only to do two of the stanzas. There are other composer's works in the pipeline.
I've already made preliminary sketches for "Elgar's Dream" (Gerontius), Mahler's second symphony "The Resurrection" (Finale) and the Finale of Sibelius' fifth symphony.
As ever the work is intended to portray the imagery that the actual music sounds generates but also the patterns of the written music on the stave

Sketchbook Item.

There hasn't been a lot of time of late to get on with work on the Artech board  but I can always find time to do a bit of sketchbook work of one sort or another, be it little more than doodling an idea or working out how it might look as a finished piece.

Those who have followed these page(s) may have noticed I feature trees and arches, especially ecclesiastical ones. For quite some time now I've been exploring some way of bringing these elements together. After all, ancient sites have evidence of arcades of trees incorporated in them. The lines of pillars and connecting arches in churches and cathedrals seem to have more to them than merely holding the roof up. There may well be theological explanations but I am only looking at the aesthetic aspects.

This sketchbook page shows two pillars replaced as trees. It has something of a surrealist look about it but is a work in progress. There'll be more to come, I'm sure.

This sketch is being worked up into a drawing 50 x 35 cm. currently as a graphite/pencil drawing but other media may be used later on. Who knows where this could lead?

Current Main Project

"German Requiem Part 2" (after Brahms) is progressing, albeit slowly. It is a large-ish work on Fabriano 5 paper, 300 gsm, 70 x 50 cms. and being drawn with micro-pens and several ink glazes being applied means this is not going to be finished in anything like a hurry. Indeed, some thirty or so hours have been spent on it already and there's still a long way to go.

 This is an overall view of the work so far. There are changes and improvements taking place as the thing progresses.

From time to time in all my work where full colour and monochrome are juxtaposed I take a photo (top picture) and desaturate it to check the tone balance. A useful guide for when adjustments need to be made, on paper, not digitally.

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 Some of the trees are half-hidden in the mists and I show this by cross-hatching. The depth of tone varies according to what the lines are made with and some side-experiments are necessary as shown here on this postcard-sized piece. It is seen better when zoomed in.

Here a detail of the tree roots on the right hand side foreground. Again, zooming in will show how the use of technical drawing methods are being applied. It is a far more time-consuming  than freehand but it serves to show more starkly the  differences between the two techniques.
Although the entire piece is an interpretation of the second stanza of Brahms' German Requiem, while doing the cross hatching shown here I was listening the Bach's Cello Suite Nr. 1 which was ideal for filligree lines drawn with a 0.1 micro pen. For the coloured sections I use diluted FW ink and a ruling pen.
Modern acrylic inks with a good old-fashioned traditional pen. I like that.

Sketchbook Pages (5)

Two pages eof studies for the "German Requiem" pictures.

Sketchbook Items (4)

I've recently returned from a holiday visiting family down in South Wales which included a few days excursion  on the Isle of Wight. Just little more than a hundred yards from the house in South Wales there is a path that leads into an oak forest where many of the trees have twisted into fantastical shapes making the place look like a set for a "Lord of the Rings" or "Hobbit" film. Most of the trees are stunted and moss covered sessile oaks which I think established themselves on  the embankments of a defunct railway  that ran from a long-gone coal mine towards Merthyr Tydfyl. These trees have grown seemingly unmolested for years. There is evidence of coppicing along the main path which is now a cycleway.Recently the area has been designated as a park. Parc Cwm Darran.

           

                 Twisted oaks. Graphite drawings tinted with water-colour pencils.

Also some trees on the skyline. 6B pencil drawing.

Not forgetting some work done at St.Catherine's Point on the Isle of Wight.

Various pencils: 0.7 mm, 2.0 mm and 3 mm leads ranging from B to 4B.

Detail from an on-going Project

Detail of top right corner of a piece on the drawing board right now. I'm showing this as it demonstrates how I am trying to incorporate some technical drawing technique alongside a more loose "arty" form, such as the trees on the background skyline. More of this piece anon as the work develops. Albeit somewhat slowly as I'm working on a separate commission at the moment.

Something I did a few Years Earlier

The Three Marys was an idea that came to mind while at Lemba in Cyprus back in 2008. Two influences; Hellenic Art extant in the Cyprus Museum and images of sculpture at the doorway of Chartres Cathedral. I got the idea of making a sculpture of the "Three Marys" mentioned in the Christian Gospels, reading from left to right of the picture, Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother of Christ and the "Other Mary" featured in the story of Mary and Martha.
However, the sculpture never materialised, only this drawing of the figures, a design for a sculpture drawn on a sheet of A2 cartridge.

Another drawing was done on the same format of the Three Fates of Greek mythology; the one who spins the yarn of life, the one who measures it and the one who cuts it. These three determine the life-span of each individual born. It too is the same size as the one above. The preparatory work was all done in Lemba and the finished drawings at my studio in Lancaster.

St Helena's Chapel - Cape Cornwall

In the latter part of Sketchbook Item (2) mention was made of the numerous sites and remains of chapels attributed to just as many minor saints and solitary religious. This is one such which can be found just north of Land's End in Cornwall about a half mile or so out of St. Just. It is marked on OS Explorer maps.

This drawing was done quite some time ago in the middle of a December gale blowing straight in off  the Atlantic. I have memories of sheltering behind a stone wall and making preliminary sketches with hands that were rapidly turning into frozen claws and finally giving up by taking a photo to work from later. The finished piece is about A4 size and as usual on 300 gramme Snowdon cartridge.

As for the claw-like hands; I have a memory of sitting in a café in St. Just with said claws around a cup of steaming Cappuccino and trying not to cry out as feeling returned. Now that is what I call suffering in the name of Art! Then again perhaps not.

Sketchbook Items (3)

High up on the summit ridge of a Pennine Fell in Northumberland or Cumberland there's a shepherd's cott. In fact they can be found dotted all over the place. Some have found new life as resting places for the grouse-shooting fraternity while others have been restored by the MBA (Mountain Bothies Association) and many more  allowed to fall into ruin or even disappear altogether.
The sequence of sketches shown here are of one such in the last category. It no longer exists.  The fell featured on the middle right page is where it was , Halton- Lea Fell overlooking the village where I lived nearly forty years ago. So the building shown here is how I imagined it might look having noted the placing of the foundations and the faint path leading to where the door could have been.The cliff is no more than five or six feet high and my guess is the bothy would be a lead-to affair.
Its an interesting little side-project, -  another work-in-progress.

Sketchbook Items (2)

The Dream of the Rood shown yesterday is only a part of a larger ongoing project made up of several parts.
This double-page spread plus the one below, from the current sketchbook form fragments of a story that's been germinating in my mind for quite some time. A bit of a romantic quasi-legend that looks back towards a long forgotten solitary hermit who lived in a tiny two-roomed cottage deep in the trackless midst of a very ancient forest. It is the changes that the cottage sees is what the sequence of sketches is about; it's coming into being, subsequent decline then veneration as a Holy Site then the forest reclaiming the Site.

Many such ancient ruined or semi ruined chapels can be found all over the remoter parts of the British Isles. Many are marked on Ordnance Survey maps and some are attributed to some sage lost in the mists of antiquity. Needless to say I've made a number of on-site drawings or, if the weather won't permit or for that matter whilst travelling with others, a photograph is taken to work on later. I'm quite fascinated by these little chapels. What was it like living in them? and why were they put there in the first place and for that matter, what is the story behind it all?

Sketchbook Items (1)

If I may move away from the "music themed" work for a while I'll post some items from my much-used sketchbook. One idea I'm looking at is the Saxon Writing, "The Dream of the Rood" by an unknown author but has an archaic English translation.   What is shown  is a concept of a chancel arch based on the one in Jarrow. There is a similar church in Sunderland. Both have connections to the Venerable Bede, a famous 7th. century monk. Whether or not Bede was involved with the poem is uncertain.

Archaeological evidence elsewhere suggests Saxon roods were stone affairs built in to the very structure of the building unlike their mediaeval wooden counterparts. A "rood" is a form of the Christian's cross.

This image is an exploration of the above idea incorporating verses from the "Dream".

The verse I've put into the sketch is shown below.

The choicest vision I do tell

Which came as a midnight dream

I saw a wondrous tree

Borne aloft - wound with light

The brightest of beams.

All was that beacon sprinkled with gold.....

..... All beheld the angel of God

Fair through pre-destiny.

[This] was no malefactor's gallows,

As holy souls beheld it.

I saw the Glory Tree....

Full text etc. here.

What was on that Drawing Board

I posted just over a week ago that I would post what can barely be glimpsed in the picture. O.K., -  bog standard excuse I know, but its been a busy week. Actually I'm somewhat indisposed just now which gives me  more time to be on this rather ancient and consequently slow PC and post an update or two.

So what we have here is the completed line drawing subsequently inked over of "Brahms' German Requiem - Part 1". The actual composition consists of nine parts and my plan is only do two of them before moving on. They are "Selig Sind" (Blessed are they) and "Denn alle Fleisch ist wie Gras und Blümen" (All flesh is like grass and flowers). The theme [Selig sind] looks at those who traverse from darkness, shown here as dense overgrown forest, and through the central area where it thins out to  the open ground beyond, though the mist shrouded ruin might well suggest remaining uncertainty. But really I leave the interpretation  to you.

Selig sind die da Leid tragen or blessed are they that bear sorrow, a loose translation from the original German, is the title of the finished piece. It is supposed to have a stave of the music beneath it. I will add that later.

As with all of this series, a selected area, in this case the central part, is in full colour fading out to monochrome or greyscale towards the edges of the work. It is my attempt to show the cadences of this particular musical passage. The work is on Fabriano 5 paper at 300 grammes per square metre (gsm) weight and 50 x 35 cms.

At the Drawing Board

The Artech board that I work from. As can be seen a work is in progress here though it was completed a couple of weeks ago.
I'll show more about this tomorrow.

Bach B minor Mass: - the Drawing.

The title looks like it should read "Bach B minor - the Movie" but no, its a drawing on 300 gsm cartridge 50 x 70 cm. It is the finished piece developed from the study sketch, - along with several others, - shown previously. Close examination should reveal some of the technical drawing aspects I've used. The German Romantics have played a role here, the painter David Caspar Friedrich and the composer Robert Schumann as well as my own interpretation.  I spent lot of my time when I was younger walking the more infrequently visited parts of the Northumberland and Scottish Border areas so quite naturally, I suppose, such features as coniferous forests, moorland, standing stones and ancient ruins.  I think I've inadvertently walked in the footsteps of the solitary wanderer featured so much in both the artist's and musician's footstep to say nothing of the writers such as Goethe and Schiller. Yes it is all very German and it is my second language to boot.

But enough of that. Sufficient to say this is a drawing using black ink and micro pen for the line and the "painterly" component is coloured inks and  brushwork.

The Sanctus in Bach's work has a filigree quality which I've reflected in the  tree-tops and the tall straight tree-trunks provide the rhythmic bass which could be the huge diapason pipes of the organ. But let's not get too bogged down in explanations. I'd  prefer you to make your own interpretation(s).

A Resurrection of Sorts

This blog has laid dormant for quite some time but finding the capacity to write what may sometimes be lengthy tracts is somewhat limited on Facebook though I will be keeping that page alive nevertheless.
To start the ball rolling again I've posted this image; an A4 sized sketch which is one  many sketches done in support of my latest project exploring the link(s) between visual art and music. This isn't a journey into synaesthesia but may well feature some aspects of this. Let's just see how it all pans out.

This is a composite built up listening to the Sanctus from J. S. Bach's B minor Mass. The musical structure emanating from the sound of this piece and the patterns of the notes on the stave suggest, - to me, - the imagery of hidden pinnacles, the point tops of coniferous trees and ancient artefacts such as standing stones and ancient ecclesiastical buildings.The painter David Caspar Friedrich and the composer Robert Schumann's romantic lieder depicting the solitary wanderer come to mind as does the work of J. R. R. Tolkien. But more of that anon in future postings.