Rachel 5/21/10

I'm really stepping outside of my comfort zone today with this sketch of a ballerina.

First off, i have low confidence when it comes to rendering effective-looking ballet poses. I never took ballet, know little about it as an art form (despite having worked as a stitcher for two nationally-recognized ballet companies), and don't enjoy watching it. So, drawing ballet costumes is like the artistic equivalent of trying to catch fish with my bare hands for me.

And secondly, this drawing is huge: 2' x 3'. This past weekend i bought a Tiffany style lamp at an antique store and the shade got wrapped in these massive sheets of paper. I prefer to draw on 11" x 17" paper or smaller, so this was another challenging element. I taped the massive piece of paper to the door of my studio and drew on it standing up. This sucked, because it made the markers i used get streaky quickly as the ink ran down the wrong way inside thanks to stupid old gravity, and my arm got tired windmilling around drawing on a perpendicular surface. I'm still feeling the strain of an overenthusiastic bowling incident from last weekend, and this didn't help.

I hate this drawing. It's hard for me to see scale and proportion on a piece this size, so from a distance i see all these flaws like how weird-shaped her limbs are and how unappealing i find the line quality of pens i like when i'm using them on smaller pages. Still, it's good to push yourself outside of what's familiar, so i think this was a valuable sketching exercise. I think i'm going to just recycle the rest of the big paper pieces though and go back to my favorite scale. Bigger = not better in this case.

In the interest of presenting something i *am* proud of (by proxy), here's an image of the costume i was attempting to render here:





This tutu and ballet bodice was constructed by Amy A. Page, a recent (2010) graduate of the Costume Production MFA program in which i teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The ballet bodice and tutu are one of the collection of projects that constitute the masters thesis in our program. The head of the program, Judy Adamson, teaches the incomparable tutu production methods practiced by the recognized master of tutu construction, Barbara Matera.

The students propose a tutu design for approval and then construct it--sometimes they do it in tandem with a company such as Carolina Ballet, but this year the two grads selected independent designs of their own choosing. Amy's classmate, Randy Handley, made a tutu featured previously on this blog, the second sketch down in this post by Jen Caprio from back in January! I thought it might be a fun project to sketch Amy's "ice queen" tutu and bodice, and use it as an excuse to try rendering a dynamic ballerina pose--that way, both grads would wind up with their tutus on here.

In retrospect, i should have chosen just one challenge here, and done it at normal familiar dimensions instead of huge. Not only do i see scale issues with the dancer's limbs, but also in the scale of the motifs on the tutu plate. To attempt some objectivity, it's ok, but i'm betting this isn't one anybody wants for a portfolio. :)

Rachel 5/16/10

I'm visiting my parents in east Tennessee, but I found a bit of time to sketch today while my mom read a book and my dad did some garden-puttering. It's possible that this is my last set of mask renderings. I'm fairly sure which six i want to do out of the twelve i've drawn thus far...

These are the Captain and the Doctor, aka Il Capitano and Il Dottore. I really love these guys! It's really cool how a lot of these stock characters have some conventional or standardized features, but are still so manipulatable in terms of imposing your own style on them.

Il Capitano is either proud/conceited or angry/piratical; i obviously picked the angry/piratical version. I'm envisioning his stache as being some kind of actual fur or hair so that it has some movement.

Il Dottore is based on the birdlike plague doctor mask in this case, but i also wanted to evoke the worried, befuddled old-man-like quality that some Dottore masks i've seen have. I'm undecided about his eyebrows--i've seen some great Dottores with fluffy fiber brows, which might be a fun element to add to him.

Now that you've seen all twelve renderings of these, which is your favorite?

Rachel 5/14/10

This may be my last one for a while, since as soon as i post this, i'm off to parts west for vacation and the SPESA Expo. I'm taking my sketchbook and pastels with me, as i'm hoping to finish preliminary sketching by Wednesday so i can start the maquette sculpting of whatever the final mask designs wind up being. I don't know whether i'll have time to photograph and write up any sketches i do between now and then though. We'll see.

These two masks are the Young Lovers. I'd been putting off doing them because i find the idea of their expressions hard to conceptualize--they need to be sort of blank slates, so the performers can indicate a huge range of emotions, and they need to be young looking, attractive-looking, perhaps innocent even.

For my own part, i also wanted their features and face-shapes to be as neutral as possible, so they could be worn by performers of any ethnicity or body-type without a disbelief-suspension issue of say, a mask with extremely bony features on a stocky or curvaceous performer.

I've seen a lot of these Young Lovers masks with the dimensional swirls on the cheeks, and i love that element so i retained it in mine. I also decided to employ a lip shape that feels more childlike than the angular peaked cupid's-bow lip shapes in many of my other mask sketches.

I am fairly certain these are two of the ones we'll actually be making; i'm considering hosting a poll over in La Bricoleuse to vote on the other mask styles, once i'm done sketching. That might be a fun way to bring some more community involvement into this project, soliciting input on the final grouping.

Rachel 5/12/10

Today's a weird one, inspirationally speaking. I had some vague ideas about wanting in my next pair of mask sketches to explore the ideas of suggested hairlines along the top edge, and whether incorporation of upper teeth could work. I also wanted some definite specific faces to influence the structure of the features.

I think it's fairly clear that the mask on the left was based on a young Billy Idol's iconic sneering expression and widow's peak. The mask on the right is a bit more obscure: it's modeled on Steve Buscemi with his buggy eyes and thin upper lip and receding-pattern hairline.

I'm happier with Steve as a general Commedia mask design--if you know it's based on him, maybe you kinda see it, but he could be any older character of whatever gender and could display a range of emotions; Billy is clearly and obviously Billy to me (does that make me old?) and less versatile of a mask. I am pretty sure i don't like teeth on character masks that aren't of the stupidity-as-comic-relief zanni variety, but i'm willing to be persuaded otherwise if any of y'all feel differently on that topic.

I know i'm really busting them out right now in terms of not taking much downtime between sketch posts; i'm trying to build up a cushion because i'm headed out of town on Friday for a book release party, then a family visit, then the SPESA EXPO 2010, so i'll be incommunicado for nearly a week.

SPESA proves to be pretty exciting--it's the Sewn Products Equipment and Suppliers of the Americas exposition, and will have miles upon miles of industrial sewing equipment demos, fabric and trim vendors, production companies and dye services, printers, mills, software developers, you name it! I've never been before, and am very excited to attend this one. I'll be reporting on it over in La Bricoleuse, which you can now like on Facebook if that's how you prefer to aggregate your blog consumption.

Rachel 5/11/10

Two more mask designs, again in oil pastel.

For the one on the left, i was going for an older female face, with a sort of wry happy expression. The one on the right is based on this really beefy bald man's face i found, in which he looked sort of ominous and sad.

I'm not as happy with either of these as with yesterday's masks--these look kind of superhero-ish to me. Or, maybe supervillainy. I saw Iron Man 2 yesterday so maybe that is subconsciously influencing my perception. I enjoy drawing these, and using the oil pastel medium, so i will probably keep doing them in variations on this theme until i get six i want to actually make for real.

I'm open to suggestion, if anybody's got a challenge for a facial expression or a stock Commedia character to render...

Rachel 5/10/10

Back to Commedia mask designs.

I did these two sort of intending them to be female characters, but they don't look particularly gendered at all. They're done in oil pastel on the same long sketchpad that i used for my prior mask sketches. I did a hint of a wearer's lip/chin in these, and i think they kind of help with scale.

I'd forgotten how much i LOVE working in oil pastel, how fast it goes and how awesomely blendable and stripped-down it can be. It really lends itself well to these Commedia mask designs, in that, i need to be thinking in broad expressive planes and shapes, but the blending and smudging properties of the oil pastels give the simple shapes a lot of depth and interest.

I was just sort of farting around with facial variations, but i like these two so much, they might actually wind up being two of the real deals. We'll see....

Eric 5/9/10

After a wonderful weekend with my parents (and no, I couldn't talk Mom into sketching for the blog), I spent today working on the final sketches for my last LCT show, River Rat and Cat.  Since there are only three sketches, and I had all day, I thought it would be no problem to knock them all out.  WRONG!!!

I love painting in acrylic, but I forget how painfully slow I am with it.  If I were to be doing more of them, then I'm sure my pace would pick up.  However, I soon remembered how long it actually took me to paint my thesis project from UT, The Love of Three Oranges, especially since there were over forty of those.

But, I still find the whole process satisfying.  And since they're not due tomorrow, I can still get them all done on time.  What I like so much about acrylic is the opacity.  Since I'm a bit of a random thinker when it comes to my sketches, I tend to not always think "light to dark" as is required in watercolor.  With acrylic, your highlights can come last, and that's all right.  I also like the color saturation acrylic can afford.

Also, due to the tea dyeing, my paper is pretty warped, so it didn't scan well.

Here's to many hours of painting ahead!

Rachel 5/8/10

It's Cyndi Lauper! Man, did i love her so much in the 80s. I remember saying to my mom that i was going to do my hair like hers, and her saying, "No, you're not." Guess that's perhaps part of why i spent the 90s with my hair every color of the rainbow.

I really was still feeling the "background inspiration," but all i could find in the house that had a decent value level of background noise was this page of classifieds. So, i thought about who newsprint reminds me of, and Cyndi Lauper came to mind and her excellent newsprint tutu from the "True Colors" video. She also was known for dynamic poses in her photo shoots, so i decided to go for her as a subject for today's sketch, which is based on this photo.

This one is about 95% colored pencil, 5% marker for the outlines and name label. I cannot complain about this sketch; i'm totally pleased with the outcome. So much so, that i might have to come up with some other appropriately zany 80s popstar to draw on some more newsprint...

Rachel 5/7/10

One of the projects i'm doing this summer is creating a set of Commedia dell'Arte masks. I've done a bunch of research and have planned the production calendar, spec'ed out the materials cost and labor estimate, and have verbal agreements with a couple of assistants for the matrix sculpting and actual production work. What's left to be done before we start is to settle on the designs for the masks themselves.

I was really inspired by the mask designs of WT Benda (whose work was exhibited at USITT this year) and have always admired the work of Alyssa Ravenwood in this area. So it was with those two artists' masks in mind that i began these ultra-preliminary sketches.

This sketch is the very first two hints of breaths of ideas, absolutely not to be considered the final designs at all. I wanted to try drawing two front-view mask concepts, an angry character and a worried/sad character, using some of the conventions of Commedia mask design--deep lines of hyperbolic expression, planar/bulbous feature exaggeration, and monochrome colorization.

I am undecided about whether i think it's helpful or distracting to draw a human lower jaw into these designs, as that's not part of the mask itself. I'll do that for the next set and see how i feel, but i'd love input as well. If you were sculpting half-masks from a design rendering, do you want to see the face of the wearer under there in the design, or just a couple of style marks like a chinline and lipline?

For an actual rendering (further down the road) i'd use this long sketchpad to create a single mask design, front view on the left and profile on the right, since i'll have two other sculptors on this project in addition to myself, and want to make sure we're all working on the same metaphorical page, so to speak.

Pretty excited about this project!

Eric 5/6/10

Since I had to come home and let the garage door repairman in, I decided to get my sketch done.  I can't complain that he's taking a long time, especially since I had a chance to get sketched.

One of my favorite costume design history/art books is The Elegant Beast.  My random explorations this week suddenly reminded me of this book.  I think this is why I've been having so much fun with these sketches.

Today is a Kitty Samurai.  Why?  Because Amy suggested a samurai, and I love my four darling, angel cats.  I don't think I did as clean of a job as I have done this week, mainly because I wanted to make sure I got it done before I had to head back to work.

Tomorrow my mom and dad are coming to visit for the weekend.  Whether she knows it or not, I'm making Mom sketch and post with me tomorrow.  Get ready, momma!

Rachel 5/6/10

Today's contribution on my behalf is back to the computer. This is a sketch from a paper project of Lend Me A Tenor, from something like 1994. The originals weren't colored in, so much like with the Mrs Linde/Doll's House sketch, it seemed like a good candidate for messing around with digital color application.

This is Diana, the sex-kitten opera diva, in her evening ensemble. She's supposed to seduce Tito in this dress (though if you know the show and its mistaken identity plot snafus, she actually throws herself at three different characters, all wearing identical Othello costumes), so it had to be drop-dead sexy, but Diana is also a fairly heartbreaking character, because her promiscuity is linked to her tenuous self-image.

She has the typical dichotomous nature of narcissism/self-hatred that plagues a lot of famous aging stars. She uses young lovers like tissue to big herself up, even as she fears getting older and losing her sexiness; she wants her big break into international opera, and believes this may be her only chance for it, to seduce Tito and be catapulted into fame on his shirttail, so to speak. So, she has the absurdly hourglassed boned/girdled understructure of 1950s wiggle-dress wearers, but she's chosen a soft sea green color to contrast with how scarlet-hot she comes on to the mens in this outfit.

So, the sketch. It's okay--i was able to use the color palette i wanted, and i think i conveyed tolerably well that the entire upper portion of the gown is supposed to be made from a shiny satin, while the skirt is piles of diaphanous net with some sort of beaded tutu-plate-esque applique at the join between gown/skirt.

But, after the past few days' worth of paper sketching, i hate this. It feels dead to me. I realize that i can get better quality work (meaning, less pixelated line quality) from more sophisticated image programs other than Paint. Trouble is, the computer i have Photoshop and Illustrator on isn't this tablet computer (laptop with a screen that flips, not a peripheral tablet i could use with other computers i don't think?), and the software's work's, so it's not like i can get it installed on this borrowed computer of my father's.

Perhaps i will invest in the peripheral, and return to digital sketching later in a better program context. For now though, all my past few days' worth of marker renderings have served to do is make me want to do more analog, and chuck digital exploration for the time being.

Eric 5/5/10

I went to Centre with an amazing talented artist (well, many, many talented artists for that matter) named Lisa Brown (only one was named Lisa Brown, the others had different names).  You can check out some of her work here.  I was always in awe of how amazingly well she could draw.  Lisa had a fabulous knack for drawing her friends in both human and animal form (I was a Gay Pride Lion in some of her sketches).

Anyway, so when I asked for random ideas to draw, Lisa suggested a dragon.  Since her avatar/alternate reality/fantasy cartoon character is a dragon named Wertle, I had to pay homage to Lisa by drawing Wertle as a lady in waiting.

I have to admit that it's really intimidating to imitate an artist whom I know and respect through the very medium in which she excels.  Wertle is made of simple lines, but Lisa's ability has always been to take those very simple shapes and create instant, likable, and expressive characters.  This is something I am trying to improve upon in my own work.

The dress I used as inspiration came from a 14th C. French engraving called The Suicide of Lucretia.  In the work, Lucretia is stabbing herself and ruining her lovely gown. I thought it was a bit too much to kill off Wertle the first time I drew her.

I plan on keeping up with the random sketches.  Although, I think I like drawing real people with fantasy heads.  Not gonna lie, but I am sort of in love with my sketch from Monday.

Rachel 5/5/10

In keeping with the theme of using highlighter pens, Sharpies, and interesting cardboard salvage, here is a design rendering for the character of Lydia Languish in Sheridan's The Rivals.

This background is from the packaging for a bicycle helmet, and much like with the Yoox box i used for the Hair designs, i couldn't bring myself to throw it away. Unfortunately, there was only the one piece of the box big enough to draw on for a rendering, so this will likely be my only sketch in this series.

As with the Hair series, i've been looking to these projects as straight-up rendering practice rather than exercising design choices. This one is based on the beautiful photograph of 19th century actress Elsie Leslie in the role, taken by a woman i truly admire, pioneer photographer and milliner Zaida Ben-Yusuf.

I became aware of Ben-Yusuf when doing some research into the documentation of historical millinery methods, as both she and her mother Anna Ben-Yusuf wrote extensively on the methods of construction of late 19th century hat styles. If you are interested in learning more, start with Frank Goodyear's Zaida Ben Yusuf: New York Portrait Photographer; and, many of you probably already have seen her mother Anna's book Edwardian Millinery. They both were lifelong milliners and millinery instructors, in addition to Zaida's work as a photographer and travel writer. Fascinating ladies!

Anyhow, Lydia's impulsive and silly, so she's got these pink and orange value levels. I deviated from the original costume of Elsie Leslie's by making her sleeve ruffles pleated, and making the fabrics used in the skirts and overrobe crispier and loftier. Leslie's underskirt looks to have some kind of delicate embroidered net or lace in a knee-deep ruffle, and i hate cutting the lower half of the body off there with a horizontal line, so i went with a plain wide striped taffeta. The overrobe is some kind of large scale rococo brocade, like the motif of the background print.

Also, what i wouldn't give to make this hat. I wonder, now that i consider it, whether Zaida didn't make the one in the picture. I have NO documentary evidence to confirm it, but i'd be surprised if she didn't do stage millinery for the actresses whose portraits she made.

This one was a great time to draw. I'll be moving on to something else...what, i don't know. I realize i got all wooby and sentimental yesterday about saying goodbye to Hair, but today, i'm all, "Whatev, this is good because it's forcing me to be detached from my subjects." Maybe that's just my mercurial nature. So we'll see, what will tomorrow bring?

Eric 5/4/10

The randomness continues....

Last night, Rachel suggested that I draw around the idea of hillbilly opera.  I loved that so much, I just had to do it.  I took the classic version of Brünhilda and took her to the hills.  Instead of horns, she wears a helmet of Bud Light bottles; instead of a shield, she wields a might box of Pizza Hut.  Her full length skirt is a pair of torn jeans that emulate a skirt.  So on and so forth.

I'm totally on board with the random and weird right now.  It's keeps the drawing fun, fun, fun!!

If any of you readers consider yourself a Hillbilly and find this offensive, well, I don't know what to tell you.  I know I did nothing but an overlapping smear of stereotypes.  So for that, I hang my head in shame, shame, shame.

Rachel 5/4/10

Thus ends the saga of Hair, with a doubled-up rendering of the characters of Claude and Berger.

As with the Dionne rendering, i approached this one as sketching practice rather than design--it's been a long time (like, 15 years) since i drew two characters in this kind of OTT musical-theatre ack-shone pose. Literally every rendering i have done in the intervening years has been single-character in a fairly sedate "drama" pose. So, these are essentially Michael McDonald's costume designs for these characters in the current Broadway production (link goes to the reference pic i used to create the sketch).

Again, my thinking is that, because Hair is a show that I can really only envision in terms of being serendipitously designed/coordinated--largely shopped/altered, found/thrifted--just by its very nature, I've been approaching the renderings as characterization guidelines rather than as something i'd hand to a shop foreman and expect people to drape right off them. (Though, arguably, someone could sit down and pattern these two men's jeans from this sketch.) In fact, i could probably spool out some elaborate art-language justification for why, in homage to the values of the script and characters and historical subculture it dramatizes, that production method is imperative. But, that's wankier than i intend to get at 8am. Imagine it in your minds, that i have done that.

These boys are green, partly because that was the color i didn't use for Jeanie and Dionne's renderings, but also because they are so full of life. I'm happy with almost everything about this sketch--the figures, the composition, the cartoonish style, the way the background works with the layout. If this were a real show (and i had infinite supplies of these boxes for renderings), i'd redraw it so i could rework Claude's facial hair to be a bit less D'Artagnan-y, but when you work solely with marker, there's no going back.

The show as i read it is really about Claude's tragic arc--he's this totally confused suburban kid that i read as being on the gayer side of bisexual, crazy in love with Berger and also crushy on Berger's sort-of-girlfriend Sheila, both of whom are willing to indulge in free-hippie-love encounters with him on occasion, but see him only as what kids these days call a FWB. The way i interpret the script, he then essentially gets drafted and sent off to Viet Nam to take part in the horrific war and ultimately die (though i think you can argue that is "just a bad trip" and doesn't really happen to him, too).

Berger is this grunty sex-driven hedonist, whom everyone in the entire cast has probably hooked up with at one point at least. He's massively charismatic, good-looking, loud, confrontational, but not cerebral; he's part of this movement because he can drop out of school, be an asshole, do a bunch of drugs, live in the park and get laid all the time, not because he actually cares about peace, love, and understanding. Claude is his best friend, inasmuch that he has one, and he'll "do it if it feels good" with Claude, but doesn't have the significant depth of romantic love that Claude (as i see it) feels for him. Berger cares about Berger.

I chose this pose because i feel like it illustrates that dynamic between them really well, yet also conveys the whole exuberant-hippie-vibe of the show, in that "We just got finished singing 'I Got Life!' OMG Yay!" sense.

It's funny, but i really feel like this whole exercise of doing a set of renderings entirely inspired by a trash-picked cardboard box has been one of the most creatively freeing experiences of the past couple years.

Because what i do in 90% of my career is production, the creativity i exercise in that realm is within a set of guidelines--silhouette, color palette, fabric choice are all handed down from the designer, and my creativity is exercised in translation of the rendering to reality. In La Bricoleuse recently, i said "i'd liken production artistry to writing a sonnet--you have a set form and a rhyme structure in which you exercise your creativity. Design is free-form verse. Both are interesting exercises in the production of art, and stretch the mind in different ways." Whenever i switch back to design work after a long stretch of production, i'm initially panicky, like, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I DON'T HAVE TO USE IAMBIC PENTAMETER AND AN A-B RHYME SCHEME?!" And then, in short order, i remember how to swim and i'm good. (Hi, mixed metaphor to the max.)

I will say, one weird thing about participating in this blog is, this is where these things stop. I've done all the renderings for Hair that i intend to do...and now i'm on to something else. There's no cast to meet or design meetings to attend or color palettes to settle on or shopping to be done or shop to work with. I don't get to work with a whole creative community of people to pull these characters off the page and give them life. And, that makes me sad, in a sense. I want to see these scenes happen, laugh and cry and marvel at how it's exactly what i envisioned but so different as well, suck up the free wine at the opening gala and congratulate the guy playing Claude who of course looks absolutely nothing like the rendering when he's out of costume, all that comes AFTER the sketching.

I've talked with some designers who think that's paradise--"If only i could just sketch all day, create the designs *I* want and not have to deal with actors and directors and their messy opinions, and drapers and tailors who care about what fabric can actually do in the real world," that kind of thing. And i just think, really? Why aren't you an illustrator then? Because all of that, which you find so frustrating, is the very life's blood of theatre, and exactly why it holds a mirror up to life itself. It's not about a perfect hermetically-sealed easy isolated antiseptic creative bubble--it's messy frustrating beautiful angry gorgeous life.

Which is not to say that you don't on occasion want to give every other person on the creative team, in the shop, or part of the cast the vigorous angry double-middle-finger. And maybe that's the place they're coming from when people say that about the ideal design bubble. But i digress.

I'm done with Hair, but i do have another found background for a sketch that i'm excited about, so i'll do that one for tomorrow. It is drastically different from this series, so it'll be fun to change gears in a huge way for it. Then maybe i'll pick that tablet computer back up...

Let the Sun Shine In!

Kyle 5/3/10

We hello duckies...
I'm just gonna go ahead and post the remainder of my Daly News sketches because that may be the last chance I have to post till I get up to Winona and settled next week (I've started packing tonight and my place is a MESS!!)...

Dave is the youngest son in the Daly family. He sings this great song about being left behind and not being able to join in the fighting because he's too young. I found a great source to get a custom Letterman sweater made in the correct school (Marquette University High School) colors.

Up next we have Kate, Marion and Ruth, the wives of the Daly sons and their sister. They sing an Andrews Sisters style song about the trials and tribulations of being a military wife. All the actors do for this number is put on hats - its really all they have time to do. In the past production the hats were really flowery and looked funny rather than realistic. I've pulled hats from CBT stock that coordinate with their base costume. They are also kind of Military Colors - Navy blue for the Navy, Olive drab for the Army, and Brown for the Marines. I think that with more realistic hats the convention of men in ladies hats won't be as funny.

Chuck is one of the Daly boys. Early in the play he is a Marine in Panama (for with he'll wear a turtle shell helmet) but, hating his assignment, he is recruited to be a Diplomatic Courier. Before his big switch to the Diplomatic Corps, Martin says that he'll get to wear "civilian clothes". In the past production he wore a bowler and sash as the courier. Now, a Bowler hat is, to quote the late Patrick Swazye as the erasable drag queen Vida, a "Say Something" hat - to me it either says British or "Clockwork Orange". Add a sash to that and it really says something, and that something is on "Civilian Clothes".

In period - the early 1940s - civilian clothes says double breasted suit and fedora to me. I haven't really gotten the go ahead from anyone about this change yet, but I hope I can talk everyone into it...

I've gotten more used to markers and am really starting to enjoy using them. I am defiantly going to do more with them over the summer to post on here.

OK, kittens...that's it from me, for a while at least. I may pop up with a few things, but no promises. I'll catch you on the flip side!!

Eric 5/3/10

Now that Wonka and River Rat are in hand, I have nothing else to design until starting at USM in the fall.  So, what to draw?  I had no inspiration to start a paper project, so I just asked on Facebook.  The two responses I received were "imaginary" and "ballet."  So, voila!  An imaginary ballet dancer.

Any chance I have to incorporate my favorite picture book of all time, I will gladly take.

So, knowing I'm not terribly interested in doing a play, toss out some super random ideas!  I'd love to try and figure out how to juxtapose contrasting elements.  C'mon, people!  Challenge me!

Rachel, 5/3/10

Wow, it's amazing how inspirational a stupid cardboard box has been! Two larger renderings in the Hair project--sideflaps on the trippy-patterened box provided space for full-body figures, so i drew the characters of Jeanie and Dionne.

First let me say something about the colors here. Overall with these sketches in this series, the colors are not meant to signify actual color choice for costumes. The colors are what they are because that's the drawing experiment of working with what you have on hand (highlighters and a cardboard box). A show like this one, even on Broadway, a lot of it is shopped, and certainly in most regional and academic settings it's going to be a serendipitous design process of finding cool pieces in stock or for rent, buying/thrifting, etc. So in the case of these designs, the color functions largely as an indication of value levels in the sketch itself, and secondarily as character commentary on a visceral/symbolic level.

For the character of Jeanie i chose pink as her color, because she strikes me as kind of like a cheerleader gone wrong. Sure, she's high on drugs all the time and super pregnant with the baby of a guy whose name she doesn't know, but she's also purely and unrequitedly in love with Claude, and strangely innocent for all that.

In terms of her appearance and attire, she's essentially this hippie chick i looked up to in high school, right down to the primitive-pleated tiered skirt and the floppy hat. In this sketch, what i'm least pleased with is the text content--i wanted to try to work the play title into it, and that i think works well, but i'm not happy with how Jeanie's name imbalances the layout. If i had it to do over, i'd put her name across the bottom, behind her feet.

Dionne is the character who leads the number "Aquarius," and i fully cop to just straight-up drawing the beautiful Patina Renae Miller, whom i saw do this role in the current Broadway revival, and horking her costume right down to the earrings and crochet bra-top. It's sketching practice, not design, right? I mean, if Eric can put Oprah in a Hogwarts uniform, surely i'm okay drawing a sketch of Michael McDonald's costume design. (See, i credited the designer, even.) Dionne is blue because, duh, "Aquarius." I tried to capture Miller's energy and joyfulness and tall slender physique, and i have to say, not to big myself up or anything, but i nailed it. I love this rendering to little bits.

For this sketch, i wanted to experiment with a rendering style that i find frustrating when i'm the production team member handed the sketch asked to build off of it. Ha! And by that i mean, the stylized rendering where the form and restriction of human physignomy is thrown to the breeze. I was also thinking about the rendering style of Lito-John Demetita (who designs primarily for ballet), and how he draws these beautiful huge figures that he folds and stuffs into the space of the page, so that they appear literally larger than life and ready to spring out of the rendering into some other more expansive stage space. So, here i wanted to create a drawing of Dionne that really embodies the way she belts out the chorus of "Aquarius," and i'm so pleased with the results that when i finished the drawing, i stood back, looked at it from across the room, and then high-fived the wall.

I would love to hear others' thoughts on the realistic rendering vs the stylized rendering, from both a design and production perspective. I admit, even from a production perspective, this particular rendering for Dionne i think is just fine, because i can look at it and see exactly what the design intent is for all of the pieces--even though no, bodies don't bend that way, if i were a design assistant i could shop this costume off of this sketch, and if i were doing crafts on this show i could paint those jeans from it. Sometimes though, i have to say without naming any names, SOME designers hand you a rendering where the hat design is a scribble and a paint splatter, and as a craftsperson, i'm always like, "Seriously? WTF here."

Next up: Claude and Berger. Bring it, mens, my highlighters and Sharpies are ready for you! (Sadly though, then i will be fresh out of cardboard box, so i reckon i'll be back to some other project soon, maybe more digital coloring.)

Eric Wonka Sketches

All of the Wonka sketches can be viewed together on my website.

Enjoy!

Eric 5/2/10

It's May!  It's May!  The lusty month of May!

I normally take the weekends off of the blog, but my final design meeting for Wonka is at 4:00 this afternoon.  It took us awhile to come to our final solution for Violet as a blueberry, so I just got it sketched and colored this morning.  Since I did a sketch, I figured it's perfect fodder for a blog entry.

My portion of Violet's transformation is the third and final step.  The first is a lighting and sound shift, the second is a scenic transformation, with fabric panels creating a windmill like effect, and the third is when the windmill dynamically breaks apart, and Violet emerges thusly.

I puzzled a long time on how I can create something interesting, theatrical and manageable for our time and budget.  I knew something couldn't just emerge from her costume because there would be no way to hide it well during the huge buildup to this moment.  We knew an inflatable costume wasn't stylized enough.  Then I thought about a Chinese paper lantern, and how it collapses to almost nothing and then expands into a spherical shape.  Perfect!

Violet acts like the tension rod in the lamp, keeping it a sphere.  I think we're going to use either thin PVC or tubing for the boning. I already found a pretty decent 4-way blue knit stretch on the clearance table at Hancock's ($2 a yard, baby!).  Her gloves will be built in to the sphere to help stabilize the piece from left to right.  The last ring around her neck and shoulders will have to be jointed or hinged, so she can shimmy it up her body and over her shoulders.

Rachel, since you're the expert crafts artisan of the group, if you have any ideas or suggestions, I would be ALL EARS!

Anyway, I just really like how this sketch turned out.  In fact, now that all of Wonka is done, I'm pretty happy with the set.  Yes, I made mistakes.  Yes, the proportions are wacky at times.  Yes, my marker work is oftentimes inexpertly executed.  But, I'm pushing myself to move past that kind of negativity.  I'll never turn out a perfect sketch, period.

I rather like to think that it is my imperfections that make me unique as an illustrator.

3-fer from Rachel, 5/2/10

These are three character studies of faces/hairstyles from Hair: The American Tribal Love Rock Musical.

I know, i am all over the map here, but here's my train of thought, meandery though it may be.

Working in a new medium can be really discouraging. I am used to how i sketch with tangible media like pencils and pens and markers, and i am used to producing a rendering that i am generally pleased with. I can experiment with new things within those familiar media, and still be happy with what i come up with. But, the past series of sketches with the tablet, i've felt like a big loser, what with how difficult it was to figure out how to make it do the simplest things, and still being largely unthrilled with the result.

So today, i was like, "I am going to draw on actual paper products using things i understand and have a certain affinity for, so i can remind myself that i don't suck at sketching, especially now that Eric has done gone and put this on Facebook and thus i can see that A HUNDRED AND FIFTY PEOPLE ARE LOOKING AT THESE THINGS EGAD. *waves* Hi all y'all.

Anyhow. Back when i did a lot of rendering regularly, i used to be generally on the lookout for cool backgrounds. This started when i did a paper project for a class and put all my renderings on the classified section of the newspaper instead of on actual sketchbook paper or whatever. When i joined this blog, it kicked back in, that background-scoping, and i've started amassing some interesting prospects, of which the background of today's sketches is an example.

You may recognize it as a decorative cardboard print that Yoox.com uses on the boxes they ship their merchandise in. (This brought me a fabulous pair of wooden-sole heeled sandals made by Cydwoq, if you care.) When i got the package, i thought, "Wow, that would be awesome to do some renderings for a show like Hair..."

Let me digress a moment here to say that i have a lifelong love for Hair, having picked up the soundtrack in my teens, when i was particularly into 60s flower child culture thanks to a mixed tape my hippie aunt and uncle had given me. Two summers ago, i was working in NYC the summer that the Public was reviving it (the original "Shakespeare in the Park" festival production that preceeded the current Broadway run), and a pal was their painter/dyer, so i went to see it at the Delacorte with her. As a teenager, my relationship to the show was fairly straightforward, in that "yay look drugs sex peace love gayness protest singing naked wheeee" sense. As an adult, i was struck by how really sad and deluded and misguided and shitty a lot of the characters are to one another, in and amongst all the yay drugs sex peace love etc.

So, i have some larger pieces of this trippy background print cardboard that i plan to use for actual full-body renderings, but first i did these three character/face studies, to see whether my idea of using single-color markers/pens to do the majority of the sketch, followed by black marker finishing work, would actually look ok on this fairly bold (yet pastel) pattern.

I should also note that this is a case of making art with whatever you have at hand--i have found Kyle's and Eric's marker-colored renderings SO inspiring, but i neither own Design markers nor have the budget to acquire any. I did enjoy yesterday attempting to apply marker-rendering techniques to my Mrs. Linde sketch digitally, but today, i really wanted to draw with actual ink on actual paper...so i scoped around the house and found a set of highlighter pens and Sharpies in two thicknesses. Voila, i figured i'd pick something to draw that would be OK in neon. That plus the trippy background serendipity, and i'm busting out some hippies.

These sketches (clockwise from top left) show the characters Woof (pink), Hud (green), and Sheila (blue).

Woof breaks my heart, from a modern perspective; i know he's often played as a clownish character, but i think it's pretty clear from the text that he's in this really psychologically bizarre situation of being closeted, yet moving in a social sphere where he DOES have sex with men as part of the free-love everybody-bang-in-piles subculture, and still cannot actually admit that he's just plain gay. I didn't mean to be cliche by choosing pink for his marker color; i started the sketch planning to draw Jeanie instead (the girl who is in love with Claude and super-pregnant with some speed freak's baby). Then as i was drawing, i realized that i was actually drawing Woof, because he's the character i associate most with the facial expression i drew here.

Hud is sexy. Every time i've seen this show, i wish his role were larger. I probably should have scanned these rather than array them on my desk and photograph them, because for him i had a green ballpoint in addition to the marker, and there's a lot of crosshatching that just looks like it's gone. Ah well. Hud is a angry and good humored, dangerous and kind, and confrontational and laid-back, so his color is green.

Sheila is an angry young woman. She's the one who is hardcore about protesting and involved in the bizarre love triangle with Claude and Berger. I've seen this show with a ton of different casts, and i have to say, if Sheila isn't seriously hot stuff, you (meaning me) spend most of the show wishing she'd take a hike so Claude and Berger can just be gay with one another, and the love triangle's more of an irritation than a plot element. This blue Sheila is the Sheila that makes that whole part of the story work for me. I did deliberately choose blue for her (she was the first sketch i did), because it's easy to see her as mostly angry, but she's got a lot of sorrow and disappointment in her as well and i wanted to express that.

I am approaching my contributions to this blog with a "take it as it comes" attitude--while i do plan to continue exploring digital sketching and image creation, i don't want to set any restrictions or concrete plans. I want to just let inspiration carry me, and explore whatever feels most interesting each day. Today, that was characters from Hair on cardboard salvaged from the recycle bin. So be it!

Rachel 5/1/10

I know i'd been working on Summer and Smoke, but it occurred to me that with this exploration into the drastically new medium of digital sketching on a tablet computer, that perhaps i was trying to do too much at once--that maybe i should focus on a specific technique with my next sketch, and i decided i'd try color application.

I recently went through my design archive and turned up this old paper project version of A Doll's House from literally like 1993 i think, which in the assignment we'd taken as far as doing uncolored renderings in pencil, but not painted. I think maybe we had determined a color palette, but if so, that's lost in the sands of time. But, whatever, i thought that it would be a good way to explore specifically some beginning color application techniques. The sketch itself may be oooooold as the hills, but it serves my purpose well here. Consider Summer and Smoke to be on hiatus for a few sketches on my behalf, while i run with this in a new direction.

So, this is Mrs Linde. I've gone with a fairly obvious color choice for her--purple hues as a blend of cold and warm, since she functions at times as a quiet exposition-excuse character, listening to Nora objectively, yet we know she also has a buried passionate side as well.

I wanted to see if i could apply digital color to this sketch to give the impression of some specific fabric choices. I was aiming for the following:

• Hat: buckram frame with soft velvet cover fabric, applied in structural folds, trimmed in a feather pouf and some geometric ribbon garniture.
  
  
• Bodice/jacket: pinstriped wool in two shades of dark purple, trimmed in silver fox, perhaps with a breath of lavender to the color of it.
  
  
• Bustle drape: crepe-backed satin.
  
  
• Underskirt: alternating crossweave/solid stripe, probably something crispy like taffeta.

What do y'all think? I'm still struggling up the steep learning curve with this, but i feel like i achieved a modicum of success with these. I'm most pleased with the hat--no surprise, since millinery's my day job. I could at least drape a muslin for the rest of the outfit from this sketch, and have some idea the structure and fabric types. (I always look at my renderings with that kind of thing in mind, as a career production artist--could someone easily start building this based on this rendering, or am i going to have to answer a lot of questions in the first draper conference?)

At some point, i'm going to shift off the tablet into Photoshopping and see what kind of digital sketch manipulation i can achieve there. This is all a really fascinating exploration, whether it ever becomes something applicable and useful or not.