Rachel 4/21/10

I'm trying to be circumspect about the learning curve in terms of sketching using a tablet computer, and not be too hard on myself. This is my third sketch ever on one; still, it's hard not to page back to my pencil sketches and look at this with the hypercritical eye of "Man, these blow."

That said, i'm happiest with this one so far, in that i tried doing a sketch in which i attempted to use the limitations of the tablet as strengths--avoiding any attempts at fine detail drawing, and employing monochromatic layering of different color-application tools to indicate stylized depth. And, looking at some images of period fashion designs helped too, with their thick border lines around figures.

I need to figure out a method to create facial features in this medium so that all my folks don't just look like the same mannequin. Right now, i feel like this character resembles Miss Alma too closely, because i can't get in there to really draw detailed features.

So, this is Rosa Gonzales, Miss Alma's rival for Dr Buchanan's affections. Her dad owns the casino in town where Dr Buchanan spends all his evenings (and money) gambling and boozing the night away. She's a peacock, sexy, adventurous, disreputable, so she's wearing an arm-baring evening gown even though in this scene she's strolling in the park.

I dunno, i may abandon the wacom as a tool, but i feel like i should give it a good old college try, and will hang in for at least a dozen sketches. If i do a dozen renderings on it and still feel frustrated by the product, i'll return to pencil. What i'm hoping is that after a dozen, i'll at least be heartened about its potential. I do appreciate this pulling me out of my comfort zone, in terms of style and how i think about building a sketch. And I'm looking forward to trying out working with it in a program other than Paint though; that may change my mind for the better. I'm determined for now to keep on pushing these pixels!

Rachel 4/19/10

So, i took a bit of a hiatus from sketching due to USITT and a couple of guest lectures i had to take care of first, but tonight i had the chance to get back into it and decided to give the Wacom sketching another try, this time without trying to incorporate color.

This is Alma Winemiller when she runs next door at 2am in her nightgown and robe, under the pretext of needing some "nerve pills" but really so she can fling herself at Dr John in her nightwear...except he's in his office drinking with his floozy girlfriend Rosa, and Alma is humiliated.

Here i've kept in the theme of asymmetrical elements for her, with her crossover imbalanced overrobe and its two weird skirt tucks on the side--lots of strange blousy horizontal arbitrary pleats and tucks in this period showing up in skirts and long peplums, and i found the hem ruffle robe in a Sears catalogue. Its fussiness made me laugh; only Alma would try to seduce someone, however ineptly, in a nightgown trimmed like a renegade lampshade from a child's bedroom. Also, clearly she's someone who is both trying for a period coiffure but having issues with Southern humidity and flyaway hair-frizz here.

I'm happier with how the Wacom drawing experimentation has turned out this time, and i'm looking forward to having the time to really jump into it, and get a more thorough feel for it as a sketching tool. I can tell that there's a lot that can be done, but i'm still learning to drive with the training wheels on as yet.

Rachel 3/27/10

So, this is a totally new experience for me, this sketch. My father has loaned me a wacom tablet computer to experiment with, and i decided to try using it to sketch.

This costume design rendering is my very first shot at drawing anything more complex than an arrow or a moustache using a tablet computer in Paint.

First, let me talk a bit about the design itself.

Alma's wearing a suit here, inspired by the jacket in this fashion plate here. I made up a skirt to go with it, based on a similar asymmetrical skirt design from a fashion magazine print source i have. This is the scene where she runs out on her parents to go strolling with Dr. Buchanan, and winds up in the arbor rebuffing his advances.

I enjoy the idea that she'd wear a suit rather than a dress for what she considers her "first date" with him, that she would perhaps think it would draw a sharper contrast between her seriousness and "respectability," and the dissipated sensuality of his lover, Rosa Gonzales. (I can't wait to design Rosa's costumes, BTW.) And, in keeping with this conception of Alma, even though she's wearing a suit, she's carrying a bright rust silk parasol and has that swooping prow of a plumed hat on. Alma's accessories show where she's headed as a character, the side of her she keeps repressed, mostly. Her clothes say no, but her hats say yes, so to speak.

As for drawing with a tablet, i'm intrigued. I will continue to experiment and sketch with it (at least until i need to give it back to my dad), to see how i feel about it as a potential design tool. I enjoy that it still allows me to be "sketchy" to a certain degree using the pencil option and the smallest brushes, and that it's so easy to lay in color as you go. I also like that, in a practical sense, i could crank out these quick-sketch renderings and email them to a director in full immediate color without all the scanning and Photoshop-tweaking wankery that i do with paper sketches.

I'm not thrilled with how...i dunno, how "cold" this sketch looks to me, in that it's not got the same life and variety of line quality that a pencil has. Shading blows with this, too; i couldn't get it to look right at all.

As a production artisan, i know that i could look at this rendering (particularly supported with research) and make this hat, this parasol, this suit; but something's lost. I know what my sketching style looks like in pencil and in ink and paint, and i can kind of see my own hand at work here, but the quality of line is just flat out different and i don't know how i feel about it yet.

One thing i do love is, i figured out how to do a pretty good hand way easier with the Paint tools--hands are something i've always struggled with, and no matter how many i draw, i always find them difficult and challenging. With this drawing, i sketched Alma's right hand last, first using the largest round paintbrush and then going back into it with the smallest brush to do some lines to indicate the glove. It's probably the best hand i've drawn in a long time. Which i guess isn't saying much, since i only just got back into sketching after a long hiatus, but still. I'm sure that the more i work with it, the more i'll discover similar techniques that will make a more refined looking sketch overall.

I'm looking forward to experimenting more with this tool--i think the next rendering i do with it, i'm going to stick to greyscale and try to work more with the sketchiness, see whether i can produce something that looks to me more like my sketching style.

I'd love to hear from any designers who use a wacom tablet in their renderings, and tips and tricks or feedback or voice-of-experience impressions, etc.!

Rachel 3/23/10

I decided that my next sketching project would be Tennessee Williams'
play Summer and Smoke.

I saw an excellent community production of this play when i was maybe about 14 or 15, and it has always remained one of my favorites. (Let's not delve into what that says about my psyche.)

It's set in an interesting time period for clothes--1914--when men are dapper and women are in that strange transitional phase between the pigeon-breasted wasp-waisted fin de siecle style and the dropped-waist bobbed-hair boy-bodied look of the 1920s. Ankles are starting to show as hems rise, yet bustlines are being more compressed and weirdly flattened. The very fashion itself echos what's going on in the head and heart of this play's protagonist. The script also has lots of hats and parasols (even as character-building plot-points), which are a personal favorite in my real-life day-job of milliner and crafts artisan.

One thing I admit I had not really considered when I stepped up to challenge myself as a contributor to this blog, was that not only would I be generating sketches, but also doing a lot of the preliminary research and paperwork for costume design. I mean, true, with a paper sketch-only project you don't have to concern yourself with budget or collaboration with a director or the rest of a design team, nor in this case do you have to address color palettes or swatching. But unless you are just doing life drawing of non-naked people, you do have to create costume plots to determine double-casting, quick changes, and so forth, and actually think about style line choices as a means of conveying character within the context of a given period or script.

So, I dashed off a costume plot last night and figured out how I'd double-up my cast to cover all the roles in this show. I did an admittedly somewhat cursory perusal of various period styles (thumbing through reference books from the shop library at work and image-googling fashions of 1910-1914), and spent some time thinking about the characters within the context of those clothes.

Today, I have a first sketch to share: Miss Alma Winemiller's first costume in Act I. It's the Fourth of July in a small Mississippi town, and she's just given a singing performance on the bandstand in the town square.

Alma is a study in contradictions--in fact, that's the premise of the play, pretty much, an exploration of how someone so at odds with herself or himself deals with being both attracted and repelled by another person equally splintered. Alma is a pastor's daughter whose mother is mentally ill. She's been to finishing school and people in town think of her as someone who puts on airs. She's a music teacher, leads an intellectual society for discussing poetry and literature; she considers herself artistically-minded and fashion-forward, but at the same time is devout in her faith and bound by the restrictive upbringing of a pastor's daughter. She craves witty repartee and flirtation, while at the same time being shocked by impropriety and ribaldry.

I looked at a lot of clothes from this time period and was excited about some of the interesting images of asymmetrical design elements and style lines--so many great asymmetrical closure and ornament details on the blouses and the cut of the skirts. All of Alma's costumes will employ elements of asymmetry, both as a nod to her desire to come off as sophisticated and to indicate her internal struggle between the two sides of her personality.

As Alma explores more facets of the warring sides of herself over the course of the play, I'm planning to push the asymmetrical elements more. Here she's just got the unusual single-lapel bodice and the prim little trios of buttons. And of course that amazing hat. Hats in this period are fascinating--still fairly large but tending toward the styles that became more popular in smaller form a decade later. Alma is just theatrical and dorky enough to think that this modified bicorne-almost-a-tricorne style would be just perfect for an Independence Day performance in the park.

It's clear in the script that the Winemiller women love their millinery, are regular patrons of the local hat shop (Alma's mother shoplifts a hat during the course of the play), and i like the idea that Alma takes the most risks with her hat styles.

So there she is when we first meet her, the preacher's daughter with her barely concealed crush on the rakish, damaged young Doctor John Buchanan...

Man, now i wish we were actually doing this show! :D