Scenic Art - End of Year Project - Study Task 8

Process of Painting Theatrical Flats
Dorian Spencer Davies

Scaling Up
More often than not, the scenic artist will be working off of art that is much smaller than the flat they will be working on. In our case we were fortunate to already to have the art at 1:10 scale so we did not need to worry about resizing the image to suit our scale. As it was all we had to do was multiply the measurements by ten to get the correct sizes.
The scenic artist first needs to grid the image by dividing it into a suitable number of grids before transferring the same number of grids onto the area they're working.
Grid
Before the scenic artist even begins to start transferring the design from paper to flat, they first need to ensure that, when finished, all the flats line up line up exactly with each other. Group A went for a slightly different method and grid each flat individually by measuring up and along. This led to some difficulty for them later on because not all the flats were constructed to the exact measurements. This meant that not all of their lines met up. Our group once again used snap lines to mark out all flats at once. This meant that all our grids matched up exactly and worked out well for us later on. We once again flogged away the excess graphite.
Plotting

Before the scenic artist can finish drawing out the rest of the art, they need to make sure all interconnecting lines are mapped out first. This ensures that when the flats are pushed together all the lines match up. While performing this task my partner failed to take into account line width and this meant that our boat failed to match up properly.
When plotting out the rest of the image we used scale rulers to scale up the measurements on the original artwork so we could apply them to the flats. While measuring my lines I attempted to always take the midpoint of the paint work so that the brush strokes would match up. However, I did give myself some leeway when I found that using what I thought were the exact measurements came out looking unnatural and inaccurate. Once the base design has been successfully applied

Blocking Colours

Black Lines

White Lines

Details

Colour Mixing
I found the colour mixing the most difficult and time consuming part of the project, sometimes spending up to half an hour attempting to get the perfect colour.
Two examples of the colours I mixed:

Chimney Red
Chrome Yellow, Barbie Pink, Cherry Red, Orange Red

Sand
Brick Orange, Burnt sienna, white,

Evaluation
Despite a panic stricken first two days (and Sunday!) I found that over the course of the project I greatly improved with both my colour mixing and ability to draw more freely. I had initially had it stuck in my head that I had to recreate the image exactly and was almost reduced to a mental breakdown when it came to having to mark out curves of the tree. It was only with the help of a course mate who helped sketch the start of the tree that I realised attempting to copy everything exactly would result in a rigid and unnatural final project. Once I allowed myself a little bit of artistic freedom I found that my drawing became much more fluid, as well as being much closer to the original than it would have been had I overthought all of my positioning.

• What skills did I learn and develop on the painting project? 

Although I was already familiar with working with scale through a mathematical background I found that my confidence grew much more in actually applying what I learnt in scaling up the original work to the size of the flat. Early on during the mapping out process I feel that I spent far too much time rubbing out and replacing lines. If I were to redo the project I would definitely be more confident in my abilities to draw accurate lines and not have to constantly redo them, In addition to this, I am able to see a definite improvement in my colour mixing as is later discussed. The most important thing I think I would take away from the project is that I am allowed to not worry so much about what I am doing and go with what feels natural, especially in terms of dimensions and colour mixing.

• How appropriate was my selection of colours and paint techniques in response to the artwork? 

I found that, especially to start with, I was very uncertain with my choice of colours and feared going too dark to the point of no return and this led me to select weaker colours, such as an incredibly light orange when creating the wall colour, which meant that I wasted a lot of paint and time attempting to get to the colour when I could have started off using bolder colour to get a closer colour more quickly and saved myself a lot of time and bother. I also found that I consistently created more paint than I needed to and forever underestimated the power of watering down the paint. 

• Why is it important when painting that we view scenic artwork at a distance? 

Particularly in regards to the painting as a whole and not just my little section of it, I found it incredibly important to take a step back and look at the whole thing because it is all well and good creating a beautiful path but when that path doesn't match up to my neighbor's it resulted in a much more clunky image.  

• In what ways, did I take care of the scenic paint-shop and maintain a safe working environment? 

I do feel like I failed somewhat in regards to this part of the project as I think that I could have been more attentive to the space around me. I found it alarmingly easy to lose track of the brushes and paint I was using, which was not helped by the fact that all colours and paints were shared by those throughout the groups. In other ways I would say that I was a bit too attentive in that I disposed of colours that would have come in use later on in the project. This is most evident with the boat work where I got rid of the orange colour after thinking that it was completely finished, when the reality was that the measurements did not match up and an entire section had to be redone. To me, this highlighted the importance of keeping every colour available until you have the finalized version standing before you.