Specialist Research Project

I have decided to do my Specialist Research Project on hand painted wallpaper/murals as I feel this is an area I could go into as a freelancer after I graduate if I can't find any jobs in theatre or film/tv! I keep on finding myself on Google images looking at chinoise wallpaper, or on Timorous Beasties website (the Glasgow based textile and wallpaper company) and I find myself in awe of their beauty and I am desperate to try replicate some designs for my walls in my flat - however I am beginning to run out of walls!

Touch Ups

For once I am beginning to be a bit more chuffed with my work! Today I went back to the paint frame after vector works for an hour and half to help out, as eeeep we only have 2weeks left of panto! Anyhoo I was back on toning down the vibrant colours on one of the flats which I used a white was wash to do so. Despite my lines looking a bit wobbly (will have to do something about them!) I'm confident I'll get this piece complete before lunch tomorrow :)

I'm not VW's biggest fan ...

Today went really quickly, can't actually believe it's week 5! Anyhoo had Vector Works today, a bit of a shame as only 7 of us turned up out 14 - not going to lie thought, I did wish at the beginning that I was painting instead. However, I'm glad I went as I know that being able to understand VW will be very useful for the future and I have made a reminder that I must download the free student version sometime this week as I just have to get grips with it ... I mean when I first started using Facebook I thought it was so confusing, but now using it everyday it's like second nature, so I guess if I keep on using vector works and getting familiar with it I'll be a pro in no time (golly maybe I am being a bit ambitious there!)

Big Draw Weekend - GoMA

I've been working as volunteer at the Gallery of Modern Art for the past couple of Saturdays, normally I help out with the Art club but this weekend was the 'Big Draw' so there was various activities dotted around the museum. I was in charge of drawing with tape, which was really cool to see what people created on the floor using a material which was hard to manipulate. I decided to draw cable coming out of the tv and going to one of the plug sockets to try convey that we rely on electricity for so much - even art! I really enjoy working at GoMA, sometimes I can't believe how creative the kids are - they even put me to shame! Also I'm still unsure what I am going to do with my life after my degree, going to Modern Art galleries always spur off ideas to me as they have huge installations of Art work and I think maybe I could use my scenic art skills to create something HUGE!

Creatures of the Night - Ashton Lane

I had a great time working with Moose Corporations being a prop assistant at the 'creatures of the night event' on ashton lane. It was a long 8 hours starting at midnight and at 6am I could start to feel myself doozing but I kept a happy, hard working determined face on as I knew this was a huge professional event. Nikki, Jill, Jude and I had the task along with Nigel's wife and a girl named India to turn G1 bars/clubs into scary venues. There were van loads of props (some of the skulls had even come from some of the indiana jones movies) and as there was not a lot of time we had to improvise using any tools we could to get the right finishes! We turned 'The Lane' into a scary Vodoo Temple, 'Jinty McGinty's' into a general scary place with a grave yard out back and skulls,rats, spiders etc. dotted around inside, 'Vodka Wodka' was turned into a scary labatory, 'Brel' became a creepy burlesque film house and 'Nude/Radio' got turned into a derelict ballroom. Working on this event was a great experience, and I was so happy/lucky to get picked. I got to strengthen my team working skills, learned to become quicker but still professional when working against the clock and was great insight to were I can use my skills from TPA in the future.

Rusty Stairs

As I hadn't worked on Medea yet, I was put on the task on doing the rust touch ups. However, once again I was rather slow and I feel I spent too much time up close instead of standing back and trying to quickly get the rusty effect. I do think that Jude, Rose and Soph did an amazing job on the stone work and it looks AMAZING! I am rather happy with my rust work, but I'm just annoyed i'm such a slow coach!

Mistakes!

I don't know why I found this piece so frustrating, I just kept on making mistake and when i looked back at the model piece it seemed rather easy and shouldn't have found it so hard! I found drawing the curves at the top above the door way really hard, and i seemed to keep on making more mistakes when I was trying to speed up as at the start of the day we were told we needed to pick up our working speed. I think I'm just scared of making mistakes, and my work looking really rubbish so I take my time so that I don't need to redo it. Urghhhh this is an area I do really need to improve on: getting quicker! Apart from that, the rest of the piece went rather well, actually that is a bit of a lie as I needed to go round the door frame and the and circles with a lighter wash as we had made colours to dark and not very interesting. However, looking at my photo's I think the end piece looks rather good :)

Palace Vases

Rose and I worked on the palace vases, which was a fun task as we got to use Glitter - wooo! Getting the main colours and painting the vases went rather well, however we faced some difficulties when mixing the metallic gold for the highlights, but after getting a quick lesson from Gary I think we the vases looked just like the model pieces. The only part of the vases I found really difficult was painting on the the small eyes, as I kept on mucking them up (i think i redid them about 4 times) and I think this has showed me that I have to get better at creating small details with a large brush

Management Project

I originally chose to do one of the street houses for my management but after some thought it seemed to daft on a flat which was actually not as complex as i first thought. Therefore I chose to manage the upstage cavecloth as I had to be on it straight from the start and it was a great learning curve. To begin with the cloth had a major problem;it was shorter then 6m which made things very awkward as being the first upstage cloth it was crucial it looked immaculate. To conquer this problem we decided to grid up the cloth as normal and then to attach a 'pocket' to make the cloths length add up to 6m. Painting the cloth went pretty smoothly as we had already painted the other 'cave cloths' using the same repetitive brushstrokes. However, things did become a little bit frustrating as we went a bit too dark so we had to go over with a light wash. The end product of the cloth looked great, and you couldn't tell that cloth was actually too short when we started!

Bad at blogging

I have been so bad recently at blogging, I don't know why I haven't found time to do it - to be honest I have just been lazy but her here is to making a conscious effort to start blogging regularly again. Anyhoo back to Aladdin the panto and my time in scenic. Its been alot of hard work, sometimes I feel myself getting annoyed that I make stupid mistakes like painting rubbish lines, or having to many holidays in my paint work but i'm getting angry as well as upset with myself because I am defiantly the slowest person in the department. Sometimes I stand back from my work and I can't believe how long it took me to do it, so I'm going to try so much harder to pick up the pace.

My First Panto Flat

I was originally going to choose this flat (one of street houses) for my management project, however after completing it - I felt it wasn't as challenging as I first thought. However, I worked on this flat from start to finish, I gridded and drew it up (not going to lie I found it so tricky at first!) as well as doing the majority of the paint work on it (Sarah did help me a lot though!)
I'm pretty pleased with the end result, I enjoyed creating the movement in the colours as the model pieces were rather bland due to the fact they were painted by the designer using flat colours. However I learnt from Gary that block colours aren't very nice on the eyes and adding movement using different brush strokes and leaving holidays (gaps in the paintwork) make the pieces more aesthetically appealing.

Start of Second Year

It's been a while now, well like the whole summer since I've last blogged and I really need to get back into the swing of it! I guess I should try set a two nights each week to blog and reflect ... okay so now I have that in type, I will make a conscious effort to blog!

Anyhoo, since September I have been helping out with the panto for this year, which is Aladdin. Despite giving up a month of my summer, I found going in to help on the cloths really really useful in my understanding of Scenic Art. Already I feel I know so much more and I feel I have gotten much more confident in my painting. I have spent a lot of time on the cloths, and so far i have learnt:

-How to pin up a cloth on the paint frame
-How to grid and scale up a cloth
-Understanding processes of painting to get the final look of the piece