YPGTTO: Kingdoms Of Sound Speed Paint Challenge #10 The String City / The Harp District

Speed Paint Challenge #10

The String City / The Harp District

The Harp:  Harps are essentially triangular in shape, and are made primarily of wood. Harp strings are made of metal gut and sometimes nylon, and are coloured to give the player a visual aid to find the right string, with all the Cs red and all the Fs black. The lowest strings are made from steel and the rest of the strings are made from gut, although some players use nylon strings for the very highest notes, as gut strings tend to break more often. The harp's neck sweeps up and forward like a snake and is often decorated with animal or human-like mythological figures. 

Gentle, metallic, blurring, resonant, short, hard, drifting, full-sounding, rushing, clear, brilliant, glittering, flowing, dull, mellow, sharp, crystal clear, reverberating, splashing, cascading.

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 10 : The Harp 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 - The Harp / Benjamin Britten