Hasty Pudding...

We are painting a batch of backdrops for Hasty Pudding Theatricals at Harvard University.
The designer is Peter Miller and all the cloths are pretty detailed so theres alot of work to do over the next few weeks. Any of the cloths I've painted so far have always been done on a paintframe, but theres no such thing in this studio, so all the painting is done on the floor- which I'm pretty excited about!

Some of the cloths also have perspective in them. which I haven't really dealt with before a couple of the students started by drawing from the references today, trying to find where the vanishing points and various other angles are, before we could even start the drawing out.

The cloth (or drop, as they say here) that I'm working on it almost symmetrical, so we have folded our paper in half and are going to pounce the image onto the other side once its fully drawn.

the one thing i've been getting a little confused with is the imperial system, its fine if i'm measuring out but when it came to transferring scale drawings, i found it a little harder to follow...

repeat patterns in perspective, we drew out the grid and drew out our shapes freehand as each one changed slightly due to the angle...

New Year, New York...

So I'm spending a month at the lovey Cobalt studios in New York.

When I say New York, I don't mean the bright lights of the city- its pretty remote out here!

Im living in Cobalt house with some of the other students that are studying on the two year programme lead by the lovely Rachel Keebler.

The studio is pretty well known and often run seminars by professionals within the industry, as well as having a backdrop service for various theatres around the country.

rachel wanted to see our level of skills so we were given a drawing exercise, i name him gilbert...

harry.....

I got a little bit of Ron Weasley time when I went to see Harry Potter today. I know it came out weeks ago but i've been working like a busy bee. So today I went along on my own as I was so desperate to see it- so sad!

I thought it was great, but my friend had already told where it ended- thanks Sinead.
I've read the books so know the story anyway, but it still would have been nice not to know.

Pitlochry.....

So back at Pitlochry, this is their first panto this year and it is HUGE!

I'm going to update this later with more pictures of what I've been working on up here, but right now, I'm tired...

Gilgamesh...

Im back at the adademy for 2 weeks painting Gilgamesh.
Its quite a nice wee show to do and I'm on my own so there a bit of freedom.
Theres not much to it, the centre piece is the ziggurat, a series of steps that have to be painted reddy orange with a few splashes of blue.

Then theres a gauze, same colour as the ziggurat.
Its realy hard to hang a gauze on your own, it take some serious arm strength and hammer balancing!!


Then there were the back flats which were to look like a night time sky, I had painted them originally with blues and blacks, with a white spatter. However once the designer seen them, she was keen for a little white to be added in with a little more ultramarine blue.

before...

after...

It was quite a nice wee show to come back to after Switzerland, not to tasking but still something to keep me busy with.

La vernissage (the opening night)

After two months of solid work, here it is...
I had an amazing time and am really glad I stayed for the two months instead of just one. I managed to see how the whole exhibiton came together and how each membewr of the team brought their own bit to it. The strangest thing was then seeing the public come in and wander round being able to touch your work rather than just view it as they would in a theatre.

the visitors were first brought inot this room with the reef , there were lots of shells on the floor to walk on as this would be the first sounds they hear...


each of the boxes with text was on springs, so anytime some stood on them, theywould make noise. this would stop again when the person came off the box, when you have a room full of people walking around, its soon got pretty loud...

the noises from the boxes were recorded by certain people, in the next room each of these tubes had informationon the people that collected these sounds. the infomation would only show up when someone walked in front of the tube as each one was rigged with a motion detector...

the vending machine room, where people could listen to different sounds, this is where most of the objects were also displayed, including the guitar fish...

These are some photos from my friend Seb (http://www.lrdprod.com/) aswell as the official MEN photographer (http://www.men.ch/)

More rust...

This time on my big submarine. This one had crashed into the sand and more of it is exposed so it has to look worn by all the water.

I primed the whole thing white, then put the blue on top, however when I got to the bottom part i added more water into the blue so it became more of a wash. I had to keep my painting quite up and down so it looked as if the submarine had scraped its way up the shore.

I found the rusty part shoed up better if I painted a little white patch on top of the blue where I knew I wanted to rust. I then took my raw sienna that I used for the other rust projects and painted it on quite washy, letting it drip down every so often.

Then same again as last time- iron powder, vinegar= rust.

to add a little more texture i took a chisel every so often and scraped into the blue paint to keep with the scratchy washed up texture...