9 PAINT TO music

Listen to a favourite album and let the sounds inspire an abstract painting, says Steve Pill

THE BENEFITS

Painting an abstract response to music is a great way to encourage a more intuitive and instinctive approach, while also allowing you to explore mark making techniques.

THE PROCESS

In his 1912 text Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinksy wrote excitedly about creating paintings that moved beyond the physical world and responded instead to “vibrations in the soul”. The result were paintings such as Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons) [below] that drew upon musical vocabulary to create lively, colourful imagery.

The challenge here is to paint a response to a piece of music. Work large for this. Choose the biggest support you can find and pin it to a wall or easel. You want to be able to paint with your arm outstretched to encourage a more gestural approach. Start the music and reach for the first colour that it brings to mind. Paint a shape that it suggests. At every break in the music or new section, choose another colour. Push the pigment around. Once you’ve built up a base layer of colour across the canvas, start to introduce line work to bring some clarity to the forms. As you paint, respond to the rhythms. You might sway your arm to the melody or make percussive marks in time to the beat. Don’t second guess yourself or stop to think, simply let the music be your guide. There are no wrong answers or mistakes in this challenge. www.steve-pill.co.uk