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 =]

My new love...

Mark Ryden

Oh. My. God.

http://www.markryden.com/index.html

Happy Sigh.

The Makings of a Vermont Tech Week

I have come to realize that as a theatre person, I have found myself getting into these crazy habits. Crazy tendencies, and the slight beginnings of a potentially Obsessive Compulsive Disorder--for my paint kitchen.

Yes, my paint kitchen. (See the OCD kicking in?)

I say my partially because I am the only one who has any form of paint in my staff title. I also say my because I put it to some order and figured out the local of everything in this area. I say my because I am the only one that cleans the space and feels the need for it to be kept orderly. Specifically because it's so tiny here.

Unfortunately with all this in mind, I am the only one that cares about the situation of this area. The designer who is the only other one who mixes any kind of color or is in there for remotely as long as I am.

With this being said, I have come into the shop early all week to work on the paintings that are on the walls, and to re-clean, re-organize, and re-wash buckets, brushes and whatever else the designer has laid his hands on. So, the other day, a few days before we got into tech, I took some pictures after I newly re-cleaned my itty-bitty paint kitchen.


It's not much, but I have to keep it clean or else its impossible to try to do anything in it. (It's virtually impossible to try to do anything in it when it's clean!)

By the end of day the same day I took this picture:


Le sigh. The other side is equally as messy. Everyday this is what I go through. It drives me crazy, but what's a girl to do. Poor Samsung and Mittens get to listen to me complain about it day in and day out. Bless them.

I decided that tracing the images from a projector of these interesting Indian inspired erotica, and then pouncing them out on the walls would be the easiest method of transferring these 8' images onto the wallpaper walls. Below is the MonkeyMan ripping open his chest. He lives on the far SR wall.



The designer, or rather, the Director wanted the images to be translucent, so to make it look like they are coming from within the walls. A pretty cool though, a choice to say the least. But it made it a lot easier and quicker to paint with this all in mind. So, this is it mid process:



Load-in was...interesting. And terrifying, but all in all, all the walls got loaded in. It looks pretty snazzy. This is from yesterday before we did a lot of the paint notes. So here is that:



Until next time....

Finishing up everything related to mega portraits

I felt the need to finish up/add these few things that I am fairly satisfied with given the time I had to work on them.

And so we begin!

Painting elevation for the General Store scene for "Merton of the Movies".

Finished product. It's 6' wide and 9' tall. Basically did it in one day...not too shabby. It obviously needs to be edited before it goes into the portfolio. Samsung got in the way doing a wavey thing with her hands.

These are the infamous painting elevations for the two huge mega portraits: The ''Rosacea Lady" was a pieced together elevation and the woman was a famous actress in the 20's. The designer didin't want the font, so it was fun to try to figure out how to do all of this.

The designer is a fanatic of Photoshop. Sometimes it works for him, sometimes it doesn't. This was a black and white image that he found that he colorized on the famous photoshop. This one was a little easier to work from.

And I give you, THE FINAL RESULT!

I'm pretty happy with them if I do say so myself.

Creating the Garden of Eden

Well for starters, I want to appolosize on the quality of these pictures--sorta. I know they aren't color perfect, but I don't have photoshop yet, and with the new laptop and everything, I'm still trying to figure everything out (how to size the images as well) and all that good stuff. But here is the jist of everything to a certain degree!

We finished the walls today! Yayayayay!
Well...the flowers we finished, now it's onto naked people!

Here are the elevations the designer gave me (like I said, color is off in these pictures!)

These are the SR/Centre walls

These are the SL walls.

Like the naked random Indian Erotica that he chose? I'm looking forward to painting that (and by looking forward, I mean I don't know how I feel about it quite yet.)

This is Greg, but I call him Mittens for reasons I will delve into another time. He is one of the carpentry interns and I somehow partially suckered him into helping me stencil.

When I took the picture, I told him to smile and this is what he did
............................hehehe, he's very angsty.
I'm pretty sure he feels like stenciling flowers with girls is damaging to his straight masculinity.
I think he secretly likes it, he just doesn't want to admit it.

This is my partner in crime, Sam, but I call her Samsung. She is the other carpentry intern here.
She's the one that's been helping me do all this stenciling. She has a little more optimistic view about days upon days of stenciling then Mittens does--or at least this is what this picture tells me.

FINISHED WALLS!!!! YAY! They are so pretty! They make me happier then they really should, but they are so purdy!

Detail! Detail! Detail!

Tonight we will be projecting the wonderful entourage of naked Indian erotica and pouncing them onto the walls to prep them to be painted tomorrow. The designer comes back after being away for a week so his arrival makes me a little anxious because I want everything to go well. I've sent him process shots during the week and it's been good feedback, but I still worry.

Anyways, more to come. I'm hoping to do a blog about the whole stenciling process, and to keep photo documenting this whole stenciling/show painting thing some more. Not too much longer now! 6 more days until my contract is O-V-E-R!!

Some wall updates!!

Here is some stuff as promised:

The walls are going good. This is the set of "The Hallow", a murder mystery drama written by Agatha Christie. They need to be done by tomorrow night. We (and by we I mean me and pretty much one other person, up to 4, but generally 2 people only) have been working non-stop on these for like 14 hour days (plus the damn run crew we have to do). Anyways....traditionally it is supposed to be set in a manor, a rich local somewhere in England, but the designer went off on the deep end, and this is his twist on things a bit.

This is the extremely pixelated "painting elevation" that the designer gave me and basically said "Good luck making a stencil!"


Heh heh heh heh......4 days later, I won, and this sample came from my angsty hands:


Eat your heart out designer! He really liked it and everyone else did, now just to transfer it onto these 16' monstrosities.

This is the second step of the first process, or the 1st step of the stenciling on the walls: the leaves. Conveniently (or not, depending on how you look at it), the designer didn't want it to be wallpaper, he wanted it to "Look like a meadow"

.........................k?

So, here we go!

This is step 2: a Leaf Stencil. It's taken us like 2 1/2 days to get this step on all the walls--taken so long and the poor stencil is so fah-cocked from the usage!

Step 3: The base of the flowers. While the leaf stencil was going on I started the flower one...almost finished, hopefully will be done by tomorrow morning! There are a lot of them, and I look like I have killed the Easter bunny with all these pastel colors on my hands, clothes, etc.

From a distance...it's getting there!

Close-up of the flower detail. Only 2 more steps to go! Highlight Stencil, & Lowlight Stencil. We started them today, they are looking AWESOME. It's making it worth staying here the extra 2 weeks during my "2 Weeks Notice" time.

It's going to be a good portfolio piece.

More to come, like painters elevations and the finishes of those huge portraits from before. On a side note about those: they are in the papers EVERYWHERE here---apparently old people really dig them and think they are good! Yay!

Hello 1,100 square feet of doom!!!

So this is the reason why I decided to stick around and give 2 weeks notice instead of bailing on these hippies up here:

I give you, ridiculiously terrifying wallpaper walls!



Part 1 of a 5 phase, 4 part stencil. Here's some more:



These walls are 16' tall. They sewed strips of muslin together and they attached it to the walls. I told them I needed to starch it--they didn't think it was necessary. It started to pucker, they learned. Oh well, silly Hippies.

I'll try to get the painters elevation up as well as the sample I had to do for what the final product is going to be. In the end it's going to be this flowery/leaf thing...it's pretty ugly and terrifying.

Oh, and please notice the circa 1970 ghetto scaffolding that is jolly rigged together and the pieces of wood I have to work on. Yes, this is "fun". And yes, I have almost passed out from the fear of the height. It's not so bueno my friends.

Not so bueno at all.

First Casualty of the Season

So, the sound booth at our theatre is up in the rafters---quite literally.

Unfortunately the first casualty was M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E's relative.

The other day the sound intern was running the sound check as the whole pre-show thing. Next thing I know I hear "Holy Crap!" and hear him scurrying down the ladder into the theatre. Apparently before the Sound Designer left, he asked said intern to clean out the booth because it "smelt like death". They thought that it was just the smell of the garbage, which they emptied, but the smell didn't go away. When the sound intern went to go plug in his laptop that night, this is what he found:



Poor thing never stood a chance. Needless to say it made the rehearsal report for the evening and this picture was shortly attached and sent out to the company for all to see.

Ahh the highlights of theatre!

I'm gonna be shitting berries like a bird for weeks

When I was a kid, we had bushes upon bushes of these blackcap berries that I used to pick during the summer and would eat handfulls and handfulls of berries a day growing up. Conveniently up here in Vermont there are MORE bushes and bushes of these berries so I am picking them religiously and including them in EVERYTHING I can.

Here is said wonderful berries:


Needless to say since I am consuming so many cupfulls of these a day I'll be shitting berries like a bird for weeks: hence the title.