Tommy can you hear me?

I'm being prodded to post, so here it is. I have two good reasons for being lax on updating here. One is the very cute little gentleman who brought plague to the house and then learned how to crawl. He's now pulling up on everything and attempting to walk unaided less than two weeks of learning to pull up. Evel Knievel actions with similar results.

The other is that the last few shows were tremendous aggrivations and I really haven't wanted to revisit them. But here we go:

Tommy
Oh I had such high hopes for this show. I love Tommy. I know every word and I was positively giddy when I found out it was going to be our spring musical. (and being built after I was back from maternity leave). The due date for designs came...and went. Finally draftings arrived but only for the main structure of the set. Nothing else. No set pieces and no color. For those of you who don't know Tommy, set wise it is a show about two things: a wardrobe with a mirror and a pinball machine. You can sum up most shows into an item or two that are critical to the show itself. Noises Off, for example, is about doors (and sardines). The Fantasticks is a show about a trunk. Well, my point here (and I do have one) is that neither the wardrobe nor the pinball machine was included in the first drawings we received.

To make a long story short (too late), information tricked in bit by bit, or not at all. Color was over a month late. The designer would ignore our requests for information. He never sent the model that he had completed. There were battles over non-issues (we can't paint the stage floor means we CAN'T paint the stage floor). In the end the designer pretty much walked away from the whole thing and we worked it out on our own.

Having never received an iota of information on the pinball machine I did a lot of research and came up with a design on my own. (I now know way too much about the history of pinball machines). We luckily have a pinball machine in our shop, though a very 80's one. With a little tweaking from my very talented husband we got it running. I found and replaced all the rubbers and worked up some new upper cabinet art. Our TD scored some plexi from a hockey rink to replace the glass on the playfield as the actor was climbing all over the machine. In the end it worked out pretty well. And now we have a functioning (though rather boring) pinball machine in our breakroom.

The main part of the set consisted of painted brick walls and a lot of white pipe railings, supports and beams. At least the brick was fun, though the time constraint due to the lateness of everything meant I was doing it all without proper sampleing. At least I got to break out the mega-brick stencil. Though I think it has seen it's last show. The stencil is falling apart and a little too unweildy for one person to easily use.

I started by painting all the walls with the grout color, using a lot of sprays to get the right texture.


Then I figured out the repeat on the stencil and where to begin on the walls (more measuring and math).


Then it was painting, painting, painting. I did the brick in more sprays, mostly using hand sprayer and some Prevals.


When it was done I did the shadows and the highlights.


Out of all the brick I've painted (oh and I've painted a lot) this was probably the one I was the least happy with. Had I more time I think I would have painted and then masked out the grout with tape. That would have allowed me to do more brush work on the bricks. (For those who are curious, I think my favorite bricks were the split homosote that were gooed and then painted with a compound piped in with pastry bags for the mortar. I'll have to find pictures somewhere)

This is the only picture I have of the wardrobe in progress. By the end we were in such a rush that there just wasn't the time to take pictures. The brown things are papertowels to protect the confetti cannons that are used in the shattered mirror effect.


Here it is in the show (picture taken by my TD)



The one truly fun project on the show was the Tommy's Holiday Camp sign. Again, time didn't allow for a lot of process pictures. Here it is being pounced:



And here it is before it was drilled for the lights. The words 'holiday camp' were spelled out in tiny light bulbs.



So that was Tommy, which led into the rep shows that had a lot of the same problems. Poor design, late and incomplete information, not much time, but this time the designer was also our Shop Foreman. Things got rather unpleasant and tense for quite a while. And since I'm a breastfeeding Momma, I couldn't drown my frustrations in gin and tonics, as I usually would.

The two shows were The Idiot Box and The Learned Ladies of Park Avenue. I only have a few pictures of Learned Ladies completed. Of the other I only have what my TD took. I had two and half weeks to paint two full sets, so pictures just didn't happen. Honestly, I don't even want to post pictures of them. I'm not proud of the work at all.

There I think we are all caught up. Now onto the Opera reps (both fun and beautiful)

Turquoise

Sorry for the delay on this post. I was having issues with the photos and then the household got the stomach flu that has been going around. Tommy has been hell on wheels as well, but then that's a whole other post.

On with the opera.
This is the floor for said operas. It is what we like to refer to as fantasy marble, which is marble in colors/types that don't actually exist in nature. Always a challenge. This was a bit more so of one due to the material I was painting on. For marble you want a perfectly smooth surface. That wasn't in the budget for me so this is what I got:



Those are stock platforms that have been painted a gazillion times. They are gouged, chipped, gapping and not ideal for the task at hand. The masonite on the floor is rough side up and the piece have varying layers of paint so they aren't consistant in texture. Not ideal for marble at all. The rake of the stage also presents a challenge.

So here we go. Primed one coat and two coats of base white.



The turquoise base coat. Notice you can still see the gaps between the platforms. That never went away.



I hit a bit of a snag when I went to layout the squares for the 'tiles'. The ones on my drawing were not in proportion to the size he wanted, and none of the tile lines are parallel (or perpendicular for that matter) to any edge of the floor. So I pretty much had to make it up on my own. My head nearly exploded with the math since the size of the floor was a tad off from the draftings as well. But I made it work, even if they weren't exactly square.

The base color down, I started the marbling. To achieve the translucent effect of marble you paint it in lots of translucent layers. I started with the grey/black color and then added the white.



Each of these photos represents a whole day of painting.



Due to time constraints I cut out many, many more steps and layers of paint. Therefore this is probably the least favorite of the marbles I have painted, but it worked for what they needed.



And you may notice my orange clogs in almost every shot. Since I bought these I don't walk on the sets in my socks anymore. It makes for much happier feet.

Once the glazing was done, I laid down two coats of semi-gloss sealer. Voila, ugly turquoise marble.



Here's a closeup of one of the tiles. This really shows how textured the floor really is.



Next time: Tommy...one of my favorite shows, and now, one of my worst nightmares.

What's Opera Doc?

I returned from maternity leave with the operas before me. These are designed by my favorite of our regular designers. This year they are performing Dido and Aeneas by Purcell and L'enfant et les Sortileges by Ravel.
This piece is a cut drop merely referred to as the flying disc.

Here is the rendering:



I got very excited when I saw this. To me, this is a scenic's dream. In discussions with the designer he said he was going for the color and the texture. That I can work with.

Started out starched and primed.



I snapped out a charcoal grid and drew in where the cutout sections would be:


Base coat and redrew the cutout lines so I wouldn't lose them



The next several shots are what it looked like at the end of each day (I was working on another project at the time as well...to be seen in the next post)















With the painting complete, I cut out the drop









The last step was gluing netting to the back to keep it all in place while it hangs. I failed to get a photo of that while in the shop, but I'll snap one when we hang it.

Next post....hideous turquoise marble.

Hey I'm alive....and working

I know I fell of the face of the earth for a while but I have a really good excuse. I had this little guy two weeks early on September 5th:



His early arrival was quite unexpected and I wasn't quite wrapped up at work yet. Actually the day I had him I planned on getting everything set up for the person covering me. At least I made my anniversary date on the 4th.

So here's the show I had to abandon:

Carousel. The real problem with this, besides being 9 months pregnant in a very hot shop, were the renderings. This designer relies heavily on PhotoShop, which renders fine detail into a blur of pixels. If the original picture is poor to begin with, then it is just hell.

I started with the cut drop trees. As usual square out a box, staple down the muslin and starch. Here's a great photo of the magic of starch.



I do have to admit I was proud of myself being able to square these out perfectly by myself despite being so very, very pregnant.




At the end of the first day I had it drawn out and basic color laid in.

The second day:


The third day:



The fourth day:



All done:



We rolled up the drops to store until closer to load in. They were cut and attached to netting later on (after I went on maternity leave).
It was working on those that I had an epiphiny. Working in my socks while pregnant was killing me. I got the bright idea to get a pair of Crocs to wear on drops. It gives my feet support and is gentle on the fabric. Plus, I can dip them in a bucket to scrub them clean.

Here are the grassy hills:



This is how I painted the grass...with an ostrich feather duster.








I did a few other pieces but didn't get pictures. The next, and last thing I worked on was the carousel top. The rendering for this was the worst I think I've ever been handed. It was blurry mess of pixels. I think it was a photo scanned in and colored. I took a lot of artistic license with it out of necessity. Here it is:





And then the next day I went into labor at 4 am.

*sigh*

I'd be posting new photos of what I've been working on lately if I didn't have to spend my evening staring at pixels in PhotoShop just trying to get a decent enough rendering to use. Pregzilla really wants to beat this designer to a pulp. This designer is very PhotoShop dependent, he doesn't paint or draw any renderings. So I've got blurry drawings to work from....that is for the few drawings I have. *sigh*

So here I am listening to Weird Al while I manipulate pixels.

Madame Butterfly Ceiling

This was my favorite project for this job, despite the challenges.

This is the rendering I received. What the rendering is lacking is information explaining that the background is gold leaf. Unfortunately I didn't get that information until we had bid for the job and ordered the paint. The panels were designed to be heavyweight muslin stretched over a steel frame. This would be the first time I ever gilded fabric. I went with imitation leaf to save on cost and for size. The rendering shows squares that are 6 3/4 inches....the largest leaf I could obtain was 6 1/4 inches. The designer had no issue with the change.

I treated the fabric as I would any drop; squaring it out, stapling it down, starching and basecoating. The base color is the color between the squares on the rendering.



I drew the florals out on grided craft paper and made a pounce. Then I pounced with with powdered charcoal and then markered it.







First I laid in the major areas of color:



Then the black areas:





Then the rest of the color went down:



It got a couple coats of sealer to make sure the sizing would sit on top of the fabric.





We decided to stretch them on the frames before I gilded them. I took me much of a day to apply the gold leaf sizing to the fabric. The sizing was brushed on all the areas where the gold leaf would remain.This is what it looked like after a day of applying the leaf. I had about a 36 hour window from when I applied the sizing to adhere the leaf. I would apply the size one day, then the leaf the next. The third day I would clean up the edges and burnish it.



This shows what an area looks like after it has been leafed.


This is how I ended up removing the leaf from the areas where there was no sizing, as well as burnishing it into the fabric.


And this is what the same area looks like after. It was like I had a magic brush and the painting just miraculously appeared from it.



And here are the finished pieces:







Ooohhh....shiny.



So that is it. I sealed them since the imitation leaf has a tendency to tarnish. I would probably change a few things if I were to do it again. I'm not sure I would stretch it first the next time, or not. We did have some issues with sag; the sizing pulled it tight but it ended up sagging again later. Some of it has to do with the size and some with how it was stretched to begin with.