TACAW 5000 sq ft of plaster in 5 days

There are very few Scenic jobs in my little corner of Colorado but sometimes things come full circle.

Dick Carter is a fabulous artist, art director and (may I be so bold to say) friend. He's a long time denizen of the Roaring Fork Valley who does what a lot of us do- call this home and hop to LA or NYC to keep that career thing breathing.

I got a call from him in April about TACAW. "The Arts Campus at Willits" was opening a space called "The Temporary" as a transitional performance space while the Arts Campus is under... well... let's call it governmental "review".  The bottom line being- for pities sake lets just get something up, running and on the boards.

Dick wanted to take the retail rental space and turn it into a place with some history. You know- where you'd go to imbibe some Fringe theatre- listen to some jazz or a Mozart string quartet. Transform the hot tub showroom into a place with soul. He gave me photos of distressed plaster walls

and chandeliers hanging in empty rooms. 

I immediately got a stupid grin on my face and said "Ushuaia!" My trip to Argentina just found a place to land and there is nothing which says old plaster wall like the walls in Ushuaia.

Thank you Joyce Kubalak for developing the fantastic rust technique we used on Man of La Mancha  - use gray instead of orange and go for it.

.... a few samples later.....

5000 square feet of distressed plaster wall in 5 days with 3 Scenics and a short list of supplies
Day 1. Mix the paint and set up the work space.

Day 2 first full day on site. The base color a deep base gloss has already been rolled on by the Paint Contractor (thank you Monty) which leaves Allan Trumpler, Pat Dailey and me to start laying on the first "plaster" breakup.  This is all about avoiding repeat patterns and playing matte against gloss. The initial layin is fairly quick it's the fine tuning which takes time.

Skip to Day 5: Really everything else is more of the same- warm up the "wainscot" lay in some water staining- drips- darker at the top - age spray at the bottom- add some vintage rust to all the new electrical conduit and the fuse box.

Nutcracker

The Nutcracker and Christmas... Sugar Plums, Mice,  and a chance for hundreds of little kids to wear leotards and slip into dance slippers. It's easy to be an audience member when it's your kid in the cute little bee suit spinning with the lady in the tutu. It's easy to fall in love with the audience from behind the footlights when that audience is holding you in a warm safe place... when that audience is your family. This is the place where love of dance starts for so many of us...

It's enduring and not just because of the music.

The Aspen Santa Fe Ballet asked me to repaint their Nutcracker 'book" for the 10 year old production of Nutcracker.   No one could tell me the name of the original designer but this Nutcracker is a pastiche of Victorian wedding cake lace architecture and a carousel complete with some glossy painted pony's. It's a bright colorful production with all the whimsy intact.

The Book does tricks. Each page is a little over 8'x6' and the entire book flies in. Six pages are painted muslin but the seventh is a gag page. It's spandex with a split for the Nutcracker to "break" through during the pyro.

They wanted something more colorful.

Seah Johnson , lighting supervisor for the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet redesigned the pages and Danny Bachelor Production Manager had them printed to scale on bond.  This helped a lot with all the lettering.

The printouts where then pricked and pounced onto the pages.

 pounce wheel used to prick holes into the printout.

bag of charcoal attached to a stick to pounce the design onto the muslin

the charcoal transfer

inking in the design so that the charcoal can be flogged off prior to painting

laying in the design

stencil for the decorative border on the book cover

laying in the border

to get  a velvety richness some into the blue book cover I used a dot roller 

alternating between green shade blue and utramarine

laying in the decorative border for the text pages

the 6 muslin pages in the shop

text pages

laying in the text on the spandex (you can see the split at the top)

Thanks to Isabel Rubio for finding the fabric.

frontispiece 

bookcover

Santa Fe New Mexican

Elixir

Since I've written about "work" I though I might as well show you some.

Allen Moyer asked me to work as his assistant for a production of Elixir of Love which will be produced at the Saint Louis Opera this summer (2014).

Allen's scale model using the rendering from the San Francisco production.

It's a project I've worked on with him before for the Colorado Opera and the San Francisco Opera. For those two productions I was the Scenic Artist/Scenic Supplier as well (that means I not only painted the scale rendering but painted the full scale pieces in my studio)

Here's a record of painting the scale rendering for this production:

It's all based on Grant Wood paintings. The first job was to create a composition which fit onto the stage using Grant Wood as inspiration and scans from the previous show curtains. This was done in photoshop:

A little perspective fiddling had to be done to get everything to sit on the ground together.

This was going to be 3 walls. The total width 70'. We settled on 3/4" scale because of the size of illustration board available and the level of detail needed in the rendering. I was a bit concerned with that since I wouldn't be painting it myself and all the "shorthand" I'd used in the previous renderings needed to be written out longhand this time.

I printed out the photoshop piece at 3/4" scale onto vellum and then transferred the "cartoon" to board. I do this the old fashioned way with a paper I've rubbed with graphite. Store bought transfer papers leave a greasy mark where you've applied pressure which acts as a "resist" to the paint. 

After transferring the design to hot press watercolor board it was time to start. I prefer hot press because cold press is a  textured surface.  It's much easier to get a good calligraphic line on a smooth surface (and Scenic materials are normally smooth as well). This is 3 boards taped together.  

This is Cresent brand board. I like Strathmore *a lot* better it's got a tougher skin and absorbs better. The Cresent pulled up under some of the masking fluid (not good).  

Since it's watercolor it will always be highlights first- shadows after.

I did this in 6 hour days. That's primarily because the light was right for 6 hours. Too early or too late and the colors start to change. 

Day 2

Day 3. There's endless detail in Grant Wood you just have to pull back and stop at some point.

Day 4 and I start to fill in the fields. 

I've used masking fluid (rubber cement) to cover the people in the fields.

Finally on day 5 it's beginning to look like something.

Now on Day 6 it's time for some "sweetening"

I cover the entire painting in masking film and start peeling back specific areas. Actually this is from my stash of Zipatone Parapaque photographic blocking film- it's much better than low tack masking film but no longer available.

These areas are spattered with color to add depth,

  and texture.

Then it's time to pull all the masking film off and do a few touch ups…

and then off to FedX

I hope to post pictures of the full scale production later this summer.

Here's a little taste from the San Francisco production.

This is a big challenge to light since it has so many delicate colors and it's difficult not to have something go to mud during a cue. If you want to see how Paul Palazzo solved that problem- buy the dvd.