Mmmmmm trompe l'oeil

So the only time I've actually ever done anything trompe l'oeil related, I was a sophomore in high school.
After studying it on and off for 4 years at SCAD, and seeing my fair share of it, I figure it only necessary that I finally visit it properly, and do some for myself.
Not to mention I think it's a vital skill to have as a scenic artist.
And well, I want that skill.
So, here is the latest portfolio project I'm working on...

I've only worked on it for a couple of hours, so it isn't much to show so far. I'm currently working on adding Shade and Shadow. I used the pounce from my sculpture projects, and just mirrored it over. It's only 2' x 2' so it's pretty tiny, and I'm having to work on it with smaller brushes. Not to mention is pretty much impossible to work on it on a stick, so I'm having a lot of bonding time with sitting on the ground.
It's great.
P.S. sorry about the shadow!

Who Knew!!!

I can do sculpture!
Here's some portfolio pieces I've been working on for the past month or so at Juilliard:
I have this tendency to terribly over photo document my projects with process shots, so I am bearing everyone from seeing a gazillion pictures, and just showing a few.
So I found this beautiful drawing of a piece of Gothic architecture. It is listed as a 'Wooden Boss'

huh.

I scaled it up to 1' x 2', and gridded it out in 3" squares. Then I Sharpied it in, and used it as a pounce that I've probably used about 20 times so far.

The sculpture was 5" thick. I glued 1" sheets of blue insulation foam together. The top piece of foam is missing here. This is my Subtractive Sculpture where I transferred the image to the foamboard, and with a Chinese saw, a box cutter, A LOT of Dremel tool-ing, and about 2 weeks of working on it on and off....

and putting on a layer of Sculpt or Coat and spraying a couple of coats of off-white paint I got this fantastic little piece of happy!

Yay!

For the other half of my portfolio project, I did the same thing, but using an Additive Sculpture technique. After about 2 weeks of finding objects to add, way too many Styrofoam balls, felt, shoe pieces, leather strips, string, wood, foam-core, matte-board, packing peanuts, paperclay, foam, animal glue tape, bogus paper, and what seems to be about 5 pounds of hot glue, the final result turned out a little more colorful then my Subtractive Sculpture.

I discovered the beauty of Aqua Resin, and put a couple of coats over it to unify the texture, and sprayed a coat of off-white paint on it, and this is what I got:

It's pretty spiffy. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Now onto my Tromp L'Oeil painting of the same thing. Yay!

Busy bee with art!

I've been trying to keep my artistic brain juices going by trying to work on various artsy things. Been really into vintage-esque things, and really muted color pallets. Also line weight. I'm really digging variety in line weight. I'm exploring these more and more, and I'm really excited about it. But alas, here is some things I've been working on.

I'm trying to doodle fast, look less...

and block in color better and faster.

I made this bag for my boyfriend's sister for Christmas. It was my first real attempt at making a bag from scratch, on my own, without my mom helping me. I was really proud of it! When I gave it to her, I thought she was going to pass out--apparently that means she really liked it. Score.

Detail of the bag, and I put one of her favorite phrases on it. I did all the embroidery by hand. I really dig that kind of stuff---if I could make a living off of doing that stuff, I'd think about it.

This is kinda old. I'm still exploring this ''couples'' series that I've been working on for the last year or so. Maybe I just like inking things...who knows.

Catch up!

So I know it has been a while....there is no excuse
But for the few people who do look at this, I am going to try to recap the last 2 1/2 months in pictures via as many pictures of Dochas as possible!
So...here we go!

Christmas was good...it was pretty laid back, and quiet...and nice. (Dochas enjoyed her Christmas collar with all the bells on it)

I went to Savannah to visit my boyfriend, and all my wonderful friends still down there. It was great--too short. But then again, it's nice to know I don't have to do homework anymore

I turned 23 and my dad baked me a cake with teal icing with purple, white, and yellow polka dots on it. It was pretty cool, even though it looked like the cake belonged to a 5 year old. (p.s. the colors were my choosing)

Oh yeah...and in December I did my first freelance gig (YAY!!!), helping to paint scenery for "Pee Wee's Playhouse"...yeah, it's kinda nuts. And by nuts, I mean great!

More to come!

Website is FINALLY up!

Wooohoo!

Ch-ch-check it out!!

www.lorynariana.com

Quilt for a cause

I don't know her, and I probably never will, but when my step-mother came home a few weeks ago with a piece of paper about this woman that's friends with one of the woman whose in her exercise class, I knew I had to help out.

The woman is 37, is a mother of a 3, 5 and 7 year old, and has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Colin Cancer.

Someone was asking people to make 6"x6" patches that would be sewn together on a quilt that they were going to make for her, and give to her and her family during this difficult time, and something that the children could cuddle up to later on.

They asked for positive messages, I chose "Feed your faith and your fears will starve"




I did all the stitching by hand, and it took me about 2 days to finish it.

My step-mom made one too, with a daffodil with some inspirational words on it as well.

Apparently they ended up with about 100 squares and have made a decent sized quilt.

I haven't heard anything more about it, but I like to think I helped make this stranger's life and her family's lives a little easier during this difficult time.

Oh Lee Savage....

Your color pallet excites and frightens me.

All at the same time.

Ode to Juilliard

I am about to begin week 4 at Juilliard. It's pretty crazy. I'm almost completely adjusted to waking up at 5 am, catching the 6:15 train, getting into Grand Central at 7:45, jump on 2 subways, and get to Juilliard by 8--1 hour before I technically need to be to work, but in order for me to get parking back home, I need to take the early train.

I'm okay with it though, because I have about an hour to putz around the shop, get all the lights on, and lay on the stage with the ghost light looking up at the ridiculous grid system that's in the theatre right next to the paint deck.

The paint deck is pretty large. This is about 85% of the deck--I couldn't fit it all on my camera. The show that we have on the deck in that picture one of the first shows of the season called "Arms & the Man", which is designed by Lee Savage, who I worked with at BTF in '08. It's a pretty interesting set. 10 gallons of joint compound to stucco the walls. Good times, good times. Upstairs is the Charge and the Assistant Charge's offices.



Below in 'the cage' is the other intern's and mine's computer tables, and a bunch of paint storage.



I think it's pretty awesome that they gave us our own computers and desks and personal areas. We also get out own little lockers. Even though my computer is a tad outdated and circa 1999, it runs okay. I just need to BFF the IT guys at Juilliard and convince them to update my Java and Flash so I can actually see what's on the internet.

These two super wicked drops are behind my bosses desk. When you look at them closer, they look like mosaic tiles, and they are BEAUTIFUL! Most of the face work and thin black lines are done with Sharpie---another reason why I LOVE Sharpie! =] That lovely sign is infront of my boss's desk--occasionally he will break out into a German accent and yell that phrase at the other Intern and I. I'm not sure if he's trying to be funny, or being serious, or both. So, I just awkwardly laugh and pick up the pace on whatever I'm working on.



This is only about 1/4 of the paint storage area.

I about passed out when I saw all this Super Sat. I'm pretty sure there is enough Super Sat here for the next 8 years at Juilliard. I back up this statement with the fact that I used some Kelly Green from 1995. Yikes. See the older Rosco labels up there too? Yah...it's pretty ridiculous. And by ridiculous I mean AWESOME!!!

There is ALSO a full supply of Super Sats in the mixing area.

I'm in Heaven. =]

Stencils! Stencils! Stencils!

In a long overdue post, and as promised, I wanted to put up a blog about how I made these stencils for the megalithic walls I had to do while at my internship this summer up in Vermont. The show was "The Hallow", a play by the oh so famous Agatha Christie.

So here we go!

When I met with the designer, he handed me a 11"x14" piece of paper that had the image on the left on it.

For the record, I personally think the hole in the top left is oh so classy, but I digress. Turning this into a stencil, I had to think about it all in layers. Like it's a photoshop image, and you're piling and piecing the whole thing together. How would you paint this? How would you collage this? This is how I had to step back and look at this. I had to break it down to layers, each layer being a different stencil, and another step. Now, I could have easily turned this into a 10 step stencil, but I realized that me and 2 others would be mostly doing all of it, so I had to simplify: basic shapes, base color, low light and highlight. That's how I did this.

Since we fell short of tracing paper (and a lot of other things), the TD gave me a roll of this ancient paper, that's on the right. We had no lightbox either, so I ended up taping the piece of paper ontop of the elevation, layed on the picnic table, and held it to the sun: the world's largest lightbox!

After I had it all drawn out, I figured out that I could do the whole thing in 5 stencils, so I grabbed 5 highlighters and broke it down that way.

I went to the local art supply store and bought sheets of 18" x 24" acetate (large pieces of transparent paper), which I have used before and they have worked brilliantly. (Also, if you can't find that, sneak down to the gel storage or bff an electrician and see if they'll give you an old sheet (or 5) of gel. Since I knew these poor stencils were going to be through hell and back with the amount of work I would have to get out of it, I decided to invest in some stencil paper too. It's like a super heavyweight yellow-ish colored cardstock (it kind of looks like a manila envelope color) which has an almost plastic film on it so it doesn't get ruined when wet. The only downside of this is that you can't see through it, which I found really difficult. Also, they were much harder to cut out and the acetate stencils pulled through ten times better then the stencil paper. I think the stencil paper would be good if you're doing a one step stencil, but for multiple step stencils, I would say go for the acetate, hands down.

I also taped out the size of the stencil on each one with gaff tape because I have learned that just drawing it out with sharpie, it will eventually disappear, and make your soul hurt.


The leaf stencil was the first step (mind you I took all these stencil pictures AFTER the project was over). All I did to transfer all these layers to the acetate was to lay it over the drawing I did and draw it out with a sharpie, and cut then out with my good friend Mr. Exacto.

After we did the first step (a 2 color scumble with 2 different colored greens, trying to pull the depth in the elevation without doing another stencil), we put the highlight green leaf color on. The paint smelt TERRIBLE! It was awful, but that's old paint for you. For this step we sponged it on because I thought it gave it more texture and depth to it like real leaves have.



Then, after the leaves came the base of the flowers, blocked out in their shapes. I learned that the blue flower on the middle right and the top yellow flower ended up being my favorite flowers to stencil. I have no idea why.

For this step and steps 3 and 4, I went to Michaels and bought a bunch of cheap stencil brushes at various sizes, and they worked great! I was able to get a bunch so when I had a couple of people helping me, we were able to have all the steps of the stencils going and have enough brushes.


Finally, Step 3 and 4 were the high lights and low lights. This step went the fastest, and I'm really happy it did because by the time this step came around we were all pretty tired!

The final product came out really well! I am really happy with the way it came out. I'm hoping to get some more final shots up soon. A lot quicker then it took for this one to come up--promise!

Dear SCAD--

Yesterday, the recent JobWire e-mail that was sent out listed a bunch of jobs and internships that recent graduates had landed. At the end of the list it said if we wanted to share with the school we could send them an e-mail and let them know.

Well...I did.

To whom it may concern:

My name is Loryn Williams (BFA Production Design, 2009) and saw in the recent JobWire Newsletter that you had listed some internships and jobs landed by recent SCAD Graduates like myself.

I just wanted to share with everyone in the SCAD community that I have received an internship as a Scenic Painter under the Professional Intern Program at The Juilliard School in New York City for their 2009-2010 year.

I found the internship on the career services page the summer after my Freshmen year at SCAD. I contacted the program director and visited the school that summer to learn more about the program they offered. I instantly knew that this was where I wanted to be but was told that I didn't have enough experience and skillset behind me at that time in order to receive such an internship. The remaining 3 years of my time at SCAD helped me to develop that experience and skillset and ultimately work my way towards landing this wonderful internship.

I am very thankful for the education I have received with SCAD and hope that others will benefit just as much as I have from this college and the programs they offer.

Thank you,
Loryn Williams
(BFA, Production Design, 2009)


And this morning I got this e-mail....


Hello Loryn,
We are just thrilled to hear about your internship with the Julliard. We are SO proud of you and wish you every success there. Keep us posted on how it goes & enjoy NYC.
All the best--
Sue Hinkin




"....with the Juilliard."
??????????????????
hehehehehe =]