Van Gogh Shrubbery....

I was in London recenlty and of course I took a wee visit to the National Gallery. At the moment there is an amazing representation on Van Gogh's Wheatfield with Cypresses outside, made from plants. I didn't realise what it was at first because I was so close but once I stood back I could see it. Its interesting becuase I imagine its going to change as the plants grow or die, creating a different image each time you go by. What a great idea!

Happy International Handstand Day!!!

Across the world today it is International Handstand Day and of course I just had to get in on the action!!! Heres my wee handstand....
This picture took soooo much work! Basically I took it myself so I had my camera carefully balanced on a stack of dvds, then I had to put it on self timer, run into shot and attempt to hold a handstand. Some of my attempts were far from perfect, here are some of my FAILS (but as they say, practice makes perfect).......

I started here but since this happened I changed location- FAIL..........

Almost there but still a FAIL.......

Falling backwards into the bathroom- EPIC FAIL....

Even though trying to get the perfect picture was a workout in itself, I still felt the need to go to training and rope in some other handstandees. This time we went for a mexican wave.....

(who doesn't love a high school musical school jump in way of celebaration?)

Mela...

This weekend was Glasgow's annual Mela festival in Kelvingrove park and my aerial group were on show again.

On the Saturday we took all our equipment to the park and set up for class there. It was kinda weird doing class in front of passers by but its good promotion for the company and give people a chance to see what we do.

On Sunday we did two perfomances, despite the torrential rain. Our theme this year was zombie pirates! The girls put some amazing make up and costumes together, and to be hinest I was a little jealous I didnt get to be a zombie!
I wasn't acutally perfoming on the aerial equipment this time, so I done a little bit of acrobalance with some of the kids that do our youth classes. As this was their first time performing Rodolfo wanted to have someone who could kinda help them and keep them in place, so I was drafted in as an honourary kid! This did invole me being taken captive by our pirates though!

Our queen of the splits-Lauren. (One day mine will be this good, one day......)
Doubles cloudswing... Zombie pirates trying to navigate the treasure... Mags on the spanish web, I was at the bottom beating the rope so it would spin... I'm not entirely sure what Rodolfo was suppose to be but it involed a scary looking mask...
Aaaah the end, completely drenched, feet covered in mud, but alot of fun.....

Some sketchin.....

While I'm looking for work at the moment, I've been trying to keep busy and do some sketching.
My sketch of choice- pin up girls.
They're kinda strange to draw, quite un-natural, tiny waists, big boobs and hips. They're also pretty muscly legs and really toned. So it was pretty different from drawing a life model! I did this pirate one as a bit of a joke as my aerial group are doing a performance soon at the Mela festival and our theme this year is pirates. (last year was superheroes!)

In other news, my friend Rich sent me a message with a link to a review of the short film Paperskin I art directed last year. My name even gets a mention- amazin! Check it out.... http://thelostpenguin.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/rsamd-graduate-film-screening/

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)...