So just chilling watching Project X (the film about 3 school high school seniors that throw a birthday party that spirals out of control) I'm laughing and also being depressed that I am almost finished Uni and the chances of going to a wild party again getting slimmer by the day. Anyways halfway during the film my dad comes in and says I'm listening to Radio 4 and suggests that I should come into the kitchen to listen. Reluctantly I twaddle into the kitchen to listen to some documentary and it turns out to be really interesting.
It's so good to be home and being really daft with my brother and sisters. Everyone I talk to thinks my family are bats, and that we have the craziest stories every! Anyways as the my brother and sisters are back I have being swaying away from my negotiated project! On Saturday I went to the German Market in Aachen which was good fun and we also popped into the Lindt factory store ... NOMNOM! However, today I hopped back down to the basement and went with a new P.O.A!
So my painting is not going well, I have had to paint out my brother's nose as I am so annoyed with it and I just went down to the basement to have a peek at it and now I don't like the hair. BREATHE.
Anyways this post isn't really about my negotiated project ... its about something really exciting called 'The Space' click here for the website. Have you looked at it, do you know what it is? Well you should! The Space is an interactive, exciting, innovate and free way to experience the Arts for free! You can watch upcoming art events, browse through rare archives, watch live performances ... all on your computer or laptop or T.V or tablet or phone! It's a joint venture developed by Arts Council England in partnership with the BBC. I think it's such a good way to get the Arts easily available to the masses. Think about how many times you haven't gone to the Theatre or seen an exhibition at an art Gallery as you are skint for money, well this is a way to access the Arts or performance you have missed for free. It's an easy way to view our country's vast cultural archive and it is at the heart of how we as individuals use digital technology to perceive art.
I think as a Scenic Artist, what The Space is doing for us but also for other artists, musicians, actors, technologists ... is a great platform to dynamicaly show to our nation what we have to offer.
For example on the 7th of January The Space will be broadcasting: Royal Opera Live. Starting at 10.30am there will be a live stream for 10 hours of behind the scenes. 21 cameras will be positioned around the ROH, you'll be able to watch what goes on during the day: backstage you can see what Technical Stage Management are doing, in the pit you can see Antonio Pappano in action and also on the site you'll be able to view Act 3 of Wagner's 'Die Walküre'. Hmmm I wonder if we will see Jude Bomphray (my close friend on my course) behind the scenes as on the 7th of January she is having a tour round the ROH that day!
Today went pretty well, I worked on my painting for a couple of hours but it's just rather cold down in my basement! I think I must feel the cold really easily - I mean I thought it was cold in the paint shop at SLS (it's not unusual to find me painting near the radiator in there and I'm forever getting told to turn off the radiators so that the heat doesn't warp the wood!) I'm thinking I must look rather odd whilst I paint ...
Well I slept in today - I'm sleeping rather well at the moment ... think it's because panto is over so I'm feeling a big sigh of relief! Anyways I got cracking with the painting of my brother today. I painted down in our basement as we have so much useless space down there and it really is a great space - there's a sink where i can wash my brushes, a huge wall I can pin the canvas on and there are even plug sockets so that I can plug my mac in! However it's extremely cold down there so I was painting wearing my UGG's and my ski hat!
Today I successfully manage to find Schleiper on Chaussée de Charleroi and it was the best Art Store I have ever been to! It was absolutely massive (much bigger then Dom Knigi in Moscow) and was a 100x more stocked then any Art store in Glasgow. I picked up quite alot for €60 - canvas, acrylics, paint brushes, 2 pallette knives and a medium to create texture.
Andrew Salgado - Parenthesis
So now I am ready to start painting my next personal project. After browsing for quite a while gawking at Andrew Salgado paintings, I have decided to replicate his painting of the 'Parenthesis' as the portrait actually looks quite scarily like my brother Alastair! I have worked out that I have 6 full days to finish the painting until I leave Belgium on the 28th of December, so I am going to work really hard to meet this deadline!
So it's my first day back at home and I went into the centre of Brussels to try pick up some canvas to start another personal project. After traipsing around the city centre in the pouring rain trying to find'Schleiper' on Zuidstraat- which is a well known Art Store in Belgium, I got to to the shop only to discover in that particular store they don't sell canvas by the meter - There was no way I was going to buy a large mounted canvas board and try manoeuvre that on the busy subway! The man in the store was really nice and spoke English, he told me I could buy canvas by the metre at their Chaussée de Charleroi store, however for some odd reason I thought that was miles away and when I got back home I discovered it was just around the corner!
Anyways, rant over - I shall be going back into the centre of Brussels tomorrow to buy myself some canvas! I really want to fire out another personal project this week whilst I'm at home, as the personal project I am working on at the moment is taking so long. I follow a good blog/site called This Is Colossal (website) and I came across an amazing portrait artist, Andrew Salgado (website). Portraiture is probably one of my favourite types of Art, as you can be in awe of a painting and not even know who the person is in the painting, they could have some connection with you and you might not even know it. So I have decided to paint my younger brother Alastair in the style of Salgado. Hopefully this will help me to become more expressive and free in my style of painting as to be honest I am such a perfectionist!
So that's Panto finished (woop) and I am so happy to be right at the heart of production work again - that's just getting stuck in and painting painting painting!
ahsjdflkahsjkldfhla - Why am I so slow at painting at times?! I really, really, really wanted to be finished on my personal project by the end of this term but realistically that's not going to happen. I really pushed myself with this project - the painting is very detailed and I want to make a really good job of it so that it looks good in portfolio, but also that I can be proud that I have finally finished it. I think Gary may think I'm not trying hard enough with it, but I just haven't had the time to get into the swing of it and I'm finding it hard trying not to paint in a 'fine-art style.' So it looks like I will be coming into SLS during the Xmas holiday to finish it.
Wahooooo panto is all done and dusted and it feels like a huge load off my shoulders! As it was my 21st on the Friday my parents where over to celebrate my Birthday which nicely clashed with the opening night of the Pantomime. As cheesey as it sounds, at the end of panto i actually felt proud about myself (which is a feeling that never usually occurs) - everything went to plan, and that I had actually managed the pantomime rather successfully!
Oh deary me! On Tuesday we all met down at Renfrew Street (that is where the main campus of the Conservatoire is and where the production will be held on the New Atheneum Stage) and the first thing I notice when I dropped off my bag in the auditorium ... the Stage Right flown flat didn't match up with the front wall. Urgh, this was annoying as we had used the spray gun to achieve the look of the front wall and there was no way of using this on the stage as the paint would go everywhere!
Look closely in the centre of the 2 joining sides, you'll see that they don't match up!
Anyways this week there has been a lot of sitting around as it was tech rehearsals so the scenic team aren't actually scheduled to be on stage, and therefore there was manic painting at tea breaks and lunch, or any time we could sneak on stage! This week we didn't have Jude on the team :( as she was off painting another panto (which looks amazing btw!) however we still managed to get a lot done without her. We had a paint call on the 27th where we finished painting the main house, started the touch ups inside of the opening tower and doing a lot trompe l'oeil (fake shadows to make 2-D things look 3-D). Annoyingly though - this was mainly my fault as I painted the towers - the towers didn't match the style of the mini turrets, so Rosé and I did the scary job of touching them. Touching up the towers was scary to begin with as the original technique was a wet blend, however and thankfully what ever we did managed to be a hit and the towers looked 100x better!
Throughout the week we got a lot of extra notes everyday, the designer (Robin Peoples) came in on Wednesday and he seemed pretty happy with everything except he wanted more of a shadow on the Centre Stage Village flats which is a pretty big job so we will have to do that at our paint call next week!
The houses sort of look like the are floating ... eep!
