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: