Start of Shakespeare's (Week 11)

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!

Lee Connolly is head Scenic Artist on the two Shakespeare's - 'Macbeth' (starts 16/01/13) and A Comedy of Errors' (starts 30/01/13.) My good friend Lisa Bertellotti is the student designer of the two drama's and her 2 designs sound really cool!

Macbeth is set in 2018, post Scotland Independence (fictional) and the country has gone to pots! The set features a derelict burnt out Subway Carriage, a railway track and lots of rubble.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

This week I helped paint the track, we had to use a trompe l'oeil technique to give the impression that the canvas we had painted on is actually rubble. To do this we painted the canvas a brownish colour, placed torn up scraps of card board on top of the canvas and sprayed a dark muddy colour on top - this left the negative shape cardboard creating a rubble shape. We did this spray technique several times and a lot of spatter. I also worked on the carriage using lots of dark colours as washes and the spray pump to create the watery effect of fire fighters putting out a fire in the carriage.

The Railway Track in progress

Comedy of Errors is basically lots and lots of suitcases, in which characters appear from, doors come out of them and is just very surreal. The suitcases Lisa wants to use are those lovely vintage, leather ones which sadly cost a lot of money which means they can't be sourced, furthermore as actors will be standing on them, the suitcases need to be durable so construction have made them out of wood.

The suitcases getting primed

I've helped out here and there on the suitcases, I helped Rosie mix the colours, and help direct the first years how to do the leather technique. To achieve the leather technique use paint a base colour of a very bright colour, then with a thickish wash of a darker colour you paint on then sponge off with a natural sponge. We didn't get much done on the suitcases as the main priority at the moment it Macbeth as it goes on stage first.

Also this week we went on a trip! All the Applied Artists where invited to go to Pitlochry Theatre to have a tour round their work shops and see their winter production of the musical 'A White Christmas.' We left SLS at 8am as it takes about 2hours to get up to Pitlochry and it was great day. There was snow everywhere and it was really interesting looking around their workshops. Seeing all the stuff that happens there, made me excited about graduating as I think would probably be ready by June to go into a similar work place as our standards at RCS seem to be on a par with them!