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.)

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!