Seeing Music

Had a strange experience at a piano concert the other day.  While listening, I saw an image of what the music actually looked like to me: in other words, instead of thinking about the music, or simply hearing the music, it was as if I was actually seeing it.  It was all I could do not to open my phone and take notes on the image that I saw, or leave the concert altogether to get going with a painting. In any case, I stayed, and then tried to recreate what I saw.  Here is the first "draft" of the painting:

Looked like the bottom right half of the painting was too light so waded in to "fix that." 

 I didn't like how the circular form looked like a fiddle head, as that was not my intent (conscious anyway).  Went back in to increase color in the middle and some detailing:

I also decided to turn the painting such that the circular area would be at the bottom, hopefully lessening the fiddle head idea...

Going to leave it for now and start something new (HAH). Ok, so I mounted the painting to get it ready to be hung and realized that from a distance, the circular form is ungainly and a big hole. Had to wade back in and try to fix it by extending the orange pigment down through it.  Also took the opportunity to darken the blue colors. 

The painting has lost some of its magical detailing, but that was sacrificed in order to take out something that wasn't working. Will have to wait for the painting to dry and then I'll try to add some more interesting "notes" to finish it off. 

I reshaped the bulbous end of the painting and reshaped the orange part.  Will need to clean up the paint, but this pretty much ends this painting.

In the meantime, I started another small painting inspired by music which is now well underway:

I'm not sure about the color for the "moons." Will wade back in to fix that. Also need to clean up the grey colors on the snake. Decided to work up the photo of the painting in photoshop to help decide which direction to go in. This version, which I think is an improvement, shows brighter colors in the moons. 

Went back into the painting and brightened the moons by removing color.

The painting is showing darker than it really is, and I like the progression of brightening the moons.  To my surprise, they have become the subject of the painting. Going to go back into photoshop to see if I should put black/white circles within.

Also took the opportunity to brighten the photo closer to what the painting actually looks like. I like the yellow color on the moons better than the purple in the photoshopped version above. Going to give this a rest while deciding whether to add the circles into the moons. Another thought that I had was to add another "snake." This would provide even more depth to the painting. Will take this up another day.