Account of Process

This work is meant to signify the song as a whole. The composition was also inspired by the meaning of the song's name in Latin – eternal light. The point of light in the center is supposed to signify such a light. Despite being surrounded by dark, ominous clouds on all ends, it still shines bright. The light itself represents the strong element of the song. Most people have never heard the full song; only part of it in various trailers since the song's inception. That is because the song is most famous for that small part, about a minutes worth of some of the emotional and strong music ever. That is what the light source is meant to signify. It is in a way, the eye of the storm, surrounded by the clouds that make up the rest of the song, all the calm bits as well as the buildups.

Orange-yellow clouds seep through the entirety of the background, and can be both seen as coming out of and going into the light. The orange clouds are meant to signify the pre-chorus elements which occur both directly before and after the chorus. As such, the clouds are supposed to be seen as both emerging from and returning to the light, as the light is the chorus. The blue cloud in the top left corner acts as a direct contrast to the red one on the bottom right. This was meant to be a sort of balance, with the two counteracting each other. These two clouds show the two conflicting elements in the song, the slow and fast parts. I chose red and blue, partly because that pair looked aesthetically pleasing against the orange-yellow clouds, but mostly because most people tend to think of red and blue as opposite to each other (red team-blue team concept using in many games and even army/security training). There are also greyish, ash-colored clouds wafting around to give the red and orange clouds more substance. I used one of Josef Alber's suggestions here in that even placing a small pint of color alongside other colors can affect the hue and perception of those colors. In this case, the grey clouds give the red clouds a more volcanic-red color. With the light source in the middle looking like the mouth of a volcano seem from the top, the overall effect of the color of the clouds became even more pronounced. 

In both my compositions, I used lights and freely flowing cloud shapes but one of the main aspects of both are the points of light. Kandinsky kept on iterating on how simple points and patches could serve make a photo, and that was what I tried to achieve with this composition. With this song, lines and concrete shapes felt like they would not be able to do it justice. As such, I went with points instead, which have boundless array of color, form and variety.  

In my feedback, it was suggested that perhaps a more volcanic-red color with ash clouds would fit the theme of the song, due to its Lord of The Rings origins. I tried it out and I felt like it was definitely true for parts of the song. However, it wasn't symbolic of all aspects of the song yet so I added in the blue cloud to symbolize the parts of the song that were still calm and served as the buildup.