Schumann Symphony No. 1 (Spring)
Allegro animato e grazioso
by Kristin Serafini
acrylic on canvas
24″ x 30″ plus frame
$4000 (set)/ $1200 each

Now this movement was just exhausting to paint! I had kept the other compositions fairly simple (drawing one or two flowers in each frame), but when all the horns opened up so fast, and the strings started scribbling all over the place, I just knew this one was going to be complicated.

The lower strings (cello and bass) almost always sound like a deep reddish purple to me, so I chose that for the background. Actually that color is made up of about 9 layers, including a copper-green colored pencil. (I discovered that if I coat the entire painting with a matte varnish, I can draw over the paint with pencils. So throughout the series, the flowers are outlined and shaded with graphite.)

It sounded like there were lots of voices in this movement, all singing at once. That, *sigh*, meant lots of flowers. It took forever, but I got the effect I was looking for after I had finished all the orchids. Lots of trumpeting flowers.

Schumann Symphony No. 1 (Spring)