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.

 

  

For our show  "The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa" we needed over 200 stalks of corn.  

One of our master carpenters, Tasia came up with the great idea of using bubble wrap for the corn itself.  Masking tape over wire made the leaves, PVC the stalk itself, and nylon thread served as the "hair."
Roxanne shows just how realistic our fake corn is. 

  Each ear was hand glued and painted.  Each Leaf was taped and cut individually.  We never could have made all the corn without the awesome help of our loyal volunteers.  Next, each leaf had to be painted individually. 

And here we have the finished product.  A whole field of corn right in our paint shop.  

Can you find the Geno in this picture?

Time for the 2012 scene shop party!  This year's theme was a play on MMC.  We are having 3 parties at the same time in the same place.  A rave, a kegger and a cocktail party.   

Every party needs decorations, so the paint shop decided to deliver a little mural action.  

I headed up this starburst mural on the paint shop door.  

Here Gabriel and I put some humorous  finishing touches on the people.  

Here's the finished RKC mural.  We painted the people to be attendees of each party.  

Gabriel is super awesome with an airbrush, so he whipped up this fantastic floor mural for the dance floor (the paint shop rave).

Natalie Scott, a former paint intern and current props intern, helped with all that space-y awesomeness, and Thayne added that great William Shakespeare skeleton angel.  

And a good time was had by all!

This week we got to work on a phenomenal gold leafing project.    Props put together this fantastic working pumpkin carriage out of foam and various other things.  After much coating and sanding, it was time to leaf.   The set this beautiful piece will be appearing on is all gloss black.  This little guy was going to be a bright  light on stage, and it needed to be flawless.  

Above, Gino and I begin carefully leafing.  To the right, I continue to burnish.

Below, is the finished product.  We added gloss white and an airbrushed shadow.  

One of the projects Thayne and I have been working on this week are three cloud drops that hang behind windows for "The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa." 

Here we are using the HVLPs to get a nice soft cloud texture. 

We primarily used the HVLPs to paint these little drops.  


Here Thayne puts some soft, purple shadows in the clouds as the fan puffs up the drop.  

Here are the finished drops.  
We think they came out rather well! 

 

 

 

This week our fabulous intern, Roxanne, and I had the great opportunity to paint the seal of the great state of Iowa on white rear projection screen to make a lightbox for our first show in the Elizabethan this year, "The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa."


I learned a l lot about Iowa in the process.  The seal was originally a wood carving only 2 inches across, which made some of the symbols a little hard to decipher.  So, I did a little research and found out about paddle boats and iron smelters and plows and even liberty caps.  

I had never painted on RP before.  I found it to be a  very challenging surface that shows EVERY brush stroke even though we used a lot of medium in the paint.

Even had time for a little fun with the frame. 

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival opens our production of Troilus and Cressida today.  Set design by Michael Locher.  It's a very exciting production- super cool and very pretty.  It's a show full of humor and sadness.  Below are some beautiful production photos of the show.  Photography by the lovely Jenny Grahm.  

Below, the director, Rob Melrose talks a little about the story of T & C.  

This week, I got the awesome project to do a burl wood grain table with a white marble inlay panel!  I was excited and nervous.  Burl is the most difficult wood grain, and although I have come to pride myself on my woodgrain, I really wanted to make sure I delivered a "wow" on this one.  

Here is a working sample I put together using a couple different faux techniques and a few I made up. 

The turned legs were a bit of a  challenge.  Being round, they weren't very conducive to my "dry-spatter and wipe"  technique.  Spattering in the round is always tough, and this table was heavy and had hidden wheels in two of the legs making it difficult to rotate.  Because I was wiping the spatter before it completely dried, it was imperative to get to it quickly, and it was a lot of area to cover.  

Here is the finished burl:  

 

The next step was that white marble inlay.   All in all, not too difficult.  I got lucky on it being a flat, horizontal surface.  

Lastly, the black stone inlay needed to be put in.  
With the help of a vinyl stencil printed by our awesome props department, this was a breeze.  I added a soft grey ripple to give the black some stone-like depth.  

Here are some additional pictures of other angles of the table.  Click to enlarge:

Today we open our production -a world premier of a new adaption of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull"  directed and adapted by the former Artistic Director of both The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Indiana Repertory Theatre, Libby Appel.  Awesome, awesome Scenic Design by Christopher Acebo.  Photograph by  Jenny Grahm.

Today, we open our production of Animal Crackers, based on the Marx Brothers play and movie.  

Above are some beautiful set shots by the talented Jenny Grahm, set design by our Richard Hay.  It's a very funny show.  Mark Bedard  plays a fantastic Groucho, and below, Bruce Jennings, the construction superviser for the show talks about the construction process.