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.