aerial boot camp!

Aerial boot camp! My aerial class do it every year but I'd always been working and had never able to go so I was very excited this time round! Basically.we take our tents and trapezes to a new location and do some intense training over a lond weekend.
This year, camp was at Strathaven Airfield as one of the woman in the class works/lives there, a brilliant location had the Scottish weather not been involved!!
The aerial is suppose to be done outside on the truss which is covered, howver it was SOOOOO windy that it became almost impossible to get the truss up in the first place. So aerial boot camp became aerial-less boot camp.

Luckily there was backup, our two heroes and a trampoline. Our first hero, Lauren is a gymnastics coach so she took a trampolining class for a couple of hours inside the hanger where they stored all the aeroplanes.

I hadn't done any trampoling before so it was brilliant to have a go and learn lots of different tricks and somersaults.

Our other hero was Felipe, handbalancing extrordanaire who did a couple of classes to help us out with our handstands. My shoulders ached afterwards but I feel like I know the right poition my body should be in, its just a case of being able to control and hold it now.

As the wind really wasn't giving up , the people at the airfield agreed to let us hang the equipment in the hanger with the planes. Finally some aerial work!!!
Part of boot camp is you get the chance to do some new things that haven't come up yet in the normal classes, so I got to do some hoop- which I've always wanted to have a go at and a little bit of single point trapeze. The video is on its side, but you get the idea......






Even though all didn't go to plan I still had a brilliant time at camp. I really enjoyed the handbalancing classes as its something we hadn't really covered properly before. Although my wee body is a bit sore at the moment, it was definitely worth it.

The first show goes up!!!

So the first show of the season has opened!!!
It was quite a push and I was still pasting text onto the set at 6 oclock opening night- praying that the paste would dry before the show went up.
I really enjoyed working on this set because it was so different from other things I'd worked on. There wasn't much painting it was mostly composing and pasting lots of pieces of text onto the various bits of scenery.

The biggest challange was the sliders, thats the really tall flats in the pictures above. We spent quite a while layering all the pieces, making sure that there wasn't too many layer over the light boxes of the windows. Its amazing how much these pieces can change, when the lights are off there is no traces of any window the just llok like normal flats. Its a realy nice surprise for the audience when the do all come on.


Unforunatley though, that's my time at Pitlochry done for now. I really enjoyed it and felt this time round I had more responsibility and say in how things could develop.

Hello little neglected blog...

I haven't been posting lately as we've been soooo busy. Basically the set for the musical has to be on stage for tech rehersals next Saturday and we only really got started on Monday- eeek!
However there are 5 scenic artists on it so I reckon we'll be ok but its gonna be tough. I have to say though, we've already made a fair dent in it this week alone.

I want to post pictures but I've become really concious that as the set hasn't had its official premiere yet (13th May- woo!) that perhaps I shouldn't really be posting things until then... so watch this space!


I have got some pictures of the pantomime work I painted up here though! The panto was absolutely massive- 17 cloths, numerous set pieces and all VERY detailed. It was a joy to paint! No, really, it was!!!

ma wee show gauze..
forest cloth...
palace scene (lots and lots of wee cherubs to paint)...
hardup hall...

kitchen scene...
ballroom (with MORE cherubs)...

Working in the sun...

The weather has been soooo nice the past couple of days so we have been taking the opportunity to work outside in the sun! It makes a differenc to your day juist having the workshop door open, everyone seems happier.

We started playing around with some samples for the nest show too, it involves lots and lots of paper...

We're doing a paintcall on Sunday so I though I'd make some wee cupcakes to cheer everybody up!!! Mmmm........

Sandbags...

I'm painting up some vacform sandbags now. I started out with a greeny base colour then a browny wash on top. Next I started using a wee technique where I'm printing the hessian texture onto the sandbags to make them look more realistic. However, my hessian colour was a bit too strong so I put another wash over the top to take it back a bit. I then dry brushed a whitey colour afterwards, to create a wee bit of a dusty look. Now we wait for the designer...

Noodle broth...

I made a wee noodle broth for ma dinner tonight- yum yum... You need: -spring onions -fresh chilli -2 cloves garlic -2cm of ginger -1 stick lemongrass -mushrooms -1 veg stock cube -200g sugarsnap peas -some pak choi -soy sauce -noodles Put the spiring onions, some olive oil, chilli, garlic and ginger in a pan and cook fo a wee bit. Then add the mushrooms and lemongrass.

Pour in 800ml of water and the veggie stock cube, chuck in the sugarsnap peas and bring to the boil.

Add pak choi, soy sauce (to taste) and the noodles. Add a wee bit o salt and pepper too if yer up for it.

Et voila...

The life of a hedge...

And David Tennant make his Pitlochry debut! (Well kind of..) So I'm making a wee hedge, the lovely carpenters bulit the structure and I get to chuck newspaper and glue at it. Takes me back to my reef days in Switzerland... aaaah.

A wee green base coat, which now looks black, and then the green dabbing begins. I've just been sing a sponge and picking out certain bits of texture, trying to form shapes that from a distance will look like little trees.

I have my base, mid green and then two highlights but I'm not digging my lightest colour as it tends to make things chalky. Grrr...

Now we just have to wait from feedback from the designer...