So what have I been up to when I haven't er been blogging?

I have been very bad at blogging lately, and feel pretty bad about it as I should get back into the swing of it!

So the past couple of weeks we have been working on the next up and coming Shakespeare productions - 'Rome & Juliet' and '12th Night'

The above photo graph are the boulder and sand stones for 'Rome & Juliet' I worked mainly on the boulders but did the lichen on the sandstones. The designers vision is a sort of 'Celtic/African' theme  (a bit of an odd mix i think haha) anyways working on the boulders and the lichen was much more difficult then I thought.

The boulders to begin with had been painted by another member of the department but Gary wasn't really sure about them so he asked if I would have a go. Basically I just used a wide range of grey paints, used sponges to apply the colour and used feathers to create marble like viens. The most challenging part of the task was creating the lichen, gosh i just got so confused what the designer wanted. However, i think i managed to get what she was looking for by creating the lichen using saw dust and glue. However, on the sandstones I used vermiculite and a spatter effect with paint.

I really enjoyed learning/experimenting how to get the peeling paint on look on the flats for '12th Night' It was a long lengthy process in which we painted both side of news paper (one side green, the other a cream colour) and then glued them on to the flats. Whilst the paper was still wet we scrapped parts away and curled/ripped the paper.

I didn't work on the bottom half of the flats, in which the paint work looks cracked. I would have loved to have a go at as in stead of using crackle glaze (thats rather expensive) the two first years (Ruth and Rosie) used PVA and a heat gun! To be honest i think its my favourite part of the design!