YPGTTO: Kingdoms Of Sound Speed Paint Challenge #4 The Woodwind City / The Clarinet District

Speed Paint Challenge #4

The Woodwind City / The Clarinet District

Clarinet: the clarinet is composed of five parts: the beak-shaped mouthpiece with a single reed, the barrel (or socket), a piece of tube that bulges like a barrel, the upper joint (left-hand joint), the lower joint (right-hand joint) and the funnel-shaped bell. Materials: the tube: Ebonite or grenadilla or metal; keywork: nickel silver, brass, silver or gold.

Due to their vocal character clarinets have frequently been compared to the human soprano voice. They express a range of emotions from tender sentiment to bursts of passion, from seductive sensuality to desperate longing, or from cat-like cunning to demonic malevolence.

Because the instrument possesses great expressive flexibility similar to the human voice it partners the singers in opera, either accompanying them in unison or repeating or anticipating sung themes.

You can listen to the extract (below) as many times as you like. We don't want literal images of the instruments associated with the extracts, but we do want your concept paintings to associate with the shapes, forms, structures, mechanisms, colours, materials and special characteristics of the specific instrument - and the moods evoked by the music extract itself.  

We do want to get a sense of spaces and places - of being 'within' these various districts of our Kingdom Of Sound.

Think of the relationship between the instrument and the extract in the following way: the structure, shapes, mechanisms and movement of the instrument gives you your vocabulary of architectural components, and the music extract gives you the art direction (i.e. the mood, colour palette, composition etc.)

In regards to setting up your speed paints in Photoshop - a few basic rules: can you ensure you're working at the following settings: 2560 pixels x 1440 pixels / 300dpi.

Feel free to go even more panoramic if your vision demands it and feel free to flip between landscape and portrait as your imagination requires. Once you've completed your digital painting(s), can you upload it to your blog entitled YPGTTO Speed Paint Challenge, and include the number and title of the challenge too: YPGTTO Speed Paint Challenge 4 : The Clarinet District

Please can you keep all your original Speed Paint files safe and sound in a folder, as I'll be collecting them in as an archive of the project at the end of the challenge.

Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra, Op. 34 - Clarinets / Benjamin Britten

Need more inspiration? Visit the original YPGTTO brief here.