Account of Process

This composition represents the 3 major components of the song, each one represented by the 3 differently shaped clouds. In deciding which colors to use for the clouds, I followed Josef Alber's teachings on looking at the relationship between the colors and how different groups of colors affect people's perception. Many of his glass assemblages were useful when I was trying to decide what colors to use. Works like "Rhenish Legend", "Figure", and "Untitled" gave me a lot of information about color placement to work with. It was important that I choose colors that gave off the right emotions. The first part needed a chilling, yet bright emotion, while the second part needed a more grim, angry one. The last part, would need a warm color. For each, there were several choices, but I ended up going with blue for the first part, red for the second, and yellow for the third. One of the reasons was due to the popularity of the red-blue-yellow primary color scheme among painters. These 3 colors are in balance, and after going through Arnheim's readings, I think that in all of my compositions thus far in this class, balance has been the foremost thing I have been aiming for. Also, going from blue to red and then to yellow is also the same scheme that fire follows, when going from the hottest to the coolest flame. I wanted the image to be red left-to-right as Arnheim suggests, and I was hoping that this fact might influence people to do so sub-consciously. The 3 colors also fit the emotions each part conveys. Blue has a chilling effect but still has a brilliant hue. Red is the color of blood and always symbolizes anger, while yellow has a warm tonality and is also the color of the sun. Thus, these colors fit perfectly.

Next up, are the 3 light sources. Each light source is meant to signify the strong, fast chorus of each of the 3 parts. The parts shrouded in darkness are the pre-chorus elements and their being in darkness is meant to depict the calm, quiet lull. As we get to the strong part, I symbolize the grandeur of this part using the light. These were basically points of light. I also tried to arrange the position of the clouds and the light sources such that they are in balance with one another. With 3 points, you can form a triangle and so, I tried to place them such that an Isosceles triangle could be made out by connecting them. This was once again, simply just for the aim of creating balance in the composition.

There are also some other significant elements to this work. The red cloud seems to extend throughout the whole composition in the background, whereas the blue and yellow clouds are on top, and reside within a certain area. I crafted them in this manner because to me, the middle part (the red cloud) is the bridge connecting the beginning and the end. As I mentioned before, the second part of the song feels like a journey, and thus I wanted the red cloud to connect throughout the composition, and act as the connector between the blue and yellow clouds. In addition, the blue cloud seems to fade away as we go from left to right. There are still small patches of blue in the middle, but they completely fade out as we go further right. This is because in the song, the chilling effect we get at the start subsides as we get to the middle, only to be replaced by other emotions. As such, I wanted to depict that by having the blue cloud slowly decrease in size and fade out as well.

In my initial draft, I simply had a light source there to add lighting to the photo, but in my feedback, it was mentioned that having an element to represent the chorus would add depth to the composition. In addition, the idea of having the light act as a pulsing light like the kind you see in thunderclouds was brought up as giving more visual appeal to the composition. I liked both suggestions so I incorporated both into my composition as mentioned above.