This week, for a cute little side project, I got to paint feathers on this adorable little chicken, Henrietta.  

Carved from foam by the prop shop's Diane Green, our renowned fowl (and other things) sculptress, she sports a jaunty tilt to her head and eyelashes.

Here at the festival, we are getting ready to open our three outdoor shows and have gotten a little swamped with props!  Mostly from the show "The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa."  This week, we've been working on this guy:  a giant bust of Falstaff supposedly made of Cow Manure. 

It was carved from foam and coated in fiberglass by our prop department's own Annette Julien.  We then primed it to keep it from bubbling under the hot sun, and to keep the treatment durable for the outdoor show.  

Oh, yeah, it's also a working puppet and it sings. 

So first to make some nice manure textured goop.  More complicated than you think.  It can't be too fresh and smeary, can't be too old and crumbly, and it needs that perfect cowpatty brown.   

What's my secret poo recipe, you ask?  This recipe called for a little jaxsan, and little flex glue, chunky sawdust and tint.  For some extra "post digestive" realness, we also pushed in some curls of hay (not shown in sample at right).  

We pushed, rather than brushed, the goo on by hand.  It was quite fun actually!  As we put the goo on, we pushed in the hay.  Lynn Jeffries, the puppet designer, had a lot of fun with this project and  asked us specifically to put some hay coming out of his ears.  We later added some dry bush variations in color as well as some shadowing and highlighting.  

And here he is!  
The finished product.  Making "John Falstaff" the butt of Iowa's jokes!  

Detail shot!

And that's how I made poo into art.!

This week, we have been working on banners for our production of As You Like It.  

There were two sets of banners, one set for the "good" duke (the green winged antelope)  and a set for the "bad" duke (roaring lions!)  Bad guys always get the cooler stuff. 

Above, Gino paints the "hellmouth"  a cut drop that is actually used as an entry and exit.  

Thayne works on another of the lion banners.  

The slideshow below shows the progression of the lion banners and some finished shots of the hellmouth. 

Here is a nice finished shot of the "good" duke's banner, the flying antelope.  



The background was done with a soft spray and a large foam stamper, depicted below.

 

This week, Gino and I have been working on painting drop curtains for our production of Henry V.  The scenic design, by the fantastic Richard Hay, is to be a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland.  The floor is to be completely covered in white astroturf that will be painted in a similar fashion to these curtains.  Left, you will see an elevation for the two main curtains we will be painting.  

Here is a shot of the warehouse shop where we layed out all the curtains we will be painting.  The white ones will get variations on the above treatment, while the blue ones represent the French and have a fleur de lis pattern on corners of them.  

Instead of mixing a grey for the light areas, we used only black, but in less density, sort of like pointillism.  

Right, Gino uses a sponge technique.