Monday, May 3, 2010

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.)

1 comment:

  1. I'm a super fan of the Dione sketch. It's so cool!

    Well, the European school of design is a highly stylized style. I saw some of Pamela Howard's sketches on display at the V&A, and it looks like blobs of ink smeared with a stick. Literally.

    To me, a sketch is a tool: a way for us to communicate our ideas clearly for the production process. I use abstraction in the early stages, but I don't see it's use when turning in a show to a costume shop. You'd either have to do a complete, second set of construction drawings or build the show yourself. And who wants to do either one of those??

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