Book Illustration

 

Map Art

I've been designing and drawing maps for a series of fantasy books that a friend and I have been writing.  Maps are fascinating, and making them is fun.

 

But a different friend just brought my attention to this amazing art map!

Watch the video.  Really.  It's long, and it's worth the time.  From People Make Games: 

"He Won't Stop Building a Map to an Imaginary Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8N7B9b0GQ

The enormous, wonderful, ever-changing, gameified, art map of Jerry Gretzinger!

The Ghost's Afoot!

 Well, I'm back in town and back in the theater.

While I was away the Stage West production of Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine was delayed a week... so I was able to watch the Designer Run yesterday.

Tomorrow I'll be hitting the discount fabric stores along Harry Hines looking for fabric for a seance tablecloth.

Nice to be home!

Public Domain image of a seance circa 1920

Wikimedia

That Bard... At It Again

It's amazing to me that, whatever the situation, you can find a Shakespeare quote that fits.

Today's America?

O nation miserable,

With an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered,

When shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?

And that ill-luck-to-name-it Thane's play is just too, too quotable nowadays:

It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

 

Brought to my attention by Ron Charles, former book critic for the murdered Washington Post. An interesting take on the recent shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

What's Going On?

Well, the first draft of the next book is kinda done - mostly done - sorta...

Sssssh.... It's resting.

Which, honestly kills me.  I know it's a good idea, necessary even, to let a manuscript rest and cool down a bit before you start working on it again.  Just as it is a good idea with any design to walk away for a few days and then come back to it.  (That's when that stupid thing smites you in the eye. "How did I not see that?" you exclaim.) Rest is needed.

But.

I hate it.

So I'm moving on to making illustrations.

I've been really enjoying making linocut prints!  And, making it even more fun, Santa brought me new really spiffy Japanese carving tools - so much better than the standard tool kit I had before.  These make the experience feel like butter carving... smooooooth.  Lovely.

Notice the bright red baron?  A super special custom 3D printed tool with ball bearings on its underside to pressure the print's paper against the linoleum 'plate.'  Another joy to use.

On the theater front?

I just accepted a new play to design for October!

(Can't announce it yet - but it should be fun.)

Secret Projects... Well, Not Yet Ready to Reveal Ones Anyway

I've needed to cut back on theater work for the next few months, but I'll be staying busy with other projects.  The biggest of these is writing a sequel to a novel that a friend and I co-wrote last year!

A fantasy novel set in the world of Aenoriia.

That's the world I've been showing you in Minecraft form since... well, since I discovered it during covid.  Then (also in a break from theater work) I joined an international group of Minecrafters building a fantasy city... now a continent.  And now a novel.  Or two...

Not quite ready to pull the tarp off of that first novel yet (still tinkering under its hood), but pretty soon now, once I've formatted the ebook, and built the website, and solved a fussy little technical glitch... (You know those stripey scanner codes on the backs of books? Eeeevil little things!)

But.

Today I'm working on the map for Book 2, so, as a teaser, here is the map from Book 1,

AKA 

Ptolith in the Time of Rain

Map of Ptolith copyright Clare Floyd DeVries

If you want to see / learn more about Aenoriia, check out these sites:

https://www.instagram.com/astrophagymc/?hl=en or

https://www.youtube.com/c/astrophagymc

Close to the Bone

 Art and life sometimes come uncomfortably close.

Sitting through the Designer Run of Kitchen Dog Theater's new play, Dream Hou$e, was... 

was weird was what it was. 

The premise is that two sisters who recently lost their mother and inherited the long-time family home agree to let a reality TV show rennovate it for sale.

The IRL is that two designers who recently lost their mothers and have/had to deal with the family home watched and tried to seem all professional an' stuff.  (Basically, not weep all over the rest of the design team.)

Sometimes theater hits too close to the bone.

I have a visceral memory of watching another play called The Marriage of Betty & Boo, decades ago when I was very pregnant.  I have no remembrance of what happened in that play - except that every couple minutes (it seemed like) Betty would have another miscarraige and the actors would bounce a rubber baby doll off the stage.  That I remember. 

(The other couple, who had picked the play, apologized to the pregnant lady all the way home.)

And I know of at least one person who saw I play I designed, Natural Shocks, who told me later that it had shown her that she needed to get out of bad relationship.

It's not just safely sitting in a plush theater seat where this happens either...

On a trip to Europe once, when I happened to be in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, actually, on a free day with nothing planned... I got a call from a theater asking whether I was interested in designing The Diary of Anne Frank?

What are the odds of that?

Of course I said yes.  And, suddenly, the day had a plan: visit Anne Frank's house, or rather, the warehouse where her family hid during WWII. Which I had intended not to see.  Because wimp.

So I toured the Frank's hiding place and felt all the things I had intended not to feel...  But, because I was viewing this site professionally, I had just that little bit of distance that allowed me to be touched but not... well, blubber in public.

The other night, watching that Designer Run?  I wrapped myself in professionalism.  I took notes and, when the actresses cut too close to the bone, I sketched a random sketch.

Dream Hou$e, Kitchen Dog Theater, playing now!

February Rush

 Well THAT month rushed by!

Since the New Year, two shows (and a wicked lingering cough)...

Now on stage:  Pompeii!! at Kitchen Dog Theater in our new home!

For this clever and darkly funny musical - written by members of the Company - the set design is a blend of the original 2018 production by David Walsh and new bits by myself... like this crazy Wheel of Misfortune.

And Arsenic and Old Lace at Pocket Sandwich Theatre

Both good and funny shows!  (Pompeii!! ends Sunday).

Cheese Burger

Public Domain Image

Some recent advice I'm trying out: ask yourself in the morning what the best thing was about yesterday.

My yesterday was pretty good, so lots to choose from.  But my fav moment was probably when I was painting and aging planks for decks for the set of Kitchen Dog Theater's upcoming Pompeii!! (opening Feb. 12th!) and I got to hand our TD a cheeseborough.  (In highly technical language, this thingie is a weird, twisty pipe clamp/connector.)

I finally got an answer to a long-nagging question:

"Why are these called cheeseboroughs?" 

Apparently, the word "Cheeseborough" is, or was, often stamped right across the thingie.  And, as it was much easier to ask for it by that moniker than to ask for "a weird, twisty pipe clamp/connector" that became its nickname.  But the nickname also has a nickname... to Americans "cheeseborough" easily morphs to "cheeseburger" then to "burger."

So in a theater you'll occasionally hear a lighting guy call out, "Hand me a burger!"

PS Ha! But why is it stamped "Cheeseborough" you ask?  Apparently that's the name of the area of England and the foundry that makes 'em.

Wooly Hats

 Well, Texas and DFW are bracing for another Snowpocalypse...

Of course my next play is supposed to Load Into the Brand New Building Tomorrow, amid "wintery mix."

But amid all the angst of this little problem in the arts in Dallas...

My God!

The situation in Minneapolis! 

The government - OUR government - are murdering citizens in the street!

And then lying about them.  Blackening their names, lying about the threat they did not pose. Murdering a poet and mother of three who was leaving the scene after only observing.  Murdering a nurse, an ICU nurse who worked at the Veterans' hospital and who was protecting a woman ICE agents had shoved.  There only to witness and observe ICE's doings.

And what are ICE doing?

ICE agents - masked and nameless - grab a two year old baby to deport.  They grab a five year old in a wonderfully cute blue fuzzy hat with puppy dog ears to use him as a hostage to grab more of his family and deport them.  

What are the brave people of Minneapolis doing?  Witnessing.  Documenting on their phones. 

Armored only with fuzzy hats against below zero temperatures and even colder hearts...

ICE indeed.

Protest this.

Busy Fall Behind, Busy Winter and Spring Ahead

 It seems like I've had time for everything but blogging!

This Fall it was finally my chance to design The Phantom of the Opera.  A melodrama version for Pocket Sandwich Theatre.  Popcorn was thrown!

This was a chance to pull out a few foam carvings etc. made for earlier shows, like the grand Water God (8'-0" long) originally designed, years ago, for The Merchant of Venice at Shakespeare Dallas.  Here he's to be seen hiding in the lights... just as shy as the Phantom himself.

Designing and building the Phantom's organ was the most fun.  It was mostly of pool noodles for this full-foam show, but incorporated a real keyboard, and its frame was mostly parts of a vantage baby crib.  In this horror-drenched (ha!) tale, the most fearsome sight may have been the stagehands' rear view of this organ case, a 1950's Scary Bunny!

But the BIG deal this Fall was finishing a fantasy novel!

It's a long story...  A friend and I started collaborating on a short story... that got out of hand.  Huge fun!  More news on that story later, when it's closer to public release.  Suffice, for now, to say that writing, editing, revising, illustrating, and designing a cover for this epic took a whiiiile.

What else is Up-Coming?

Theatrically there are four shows: the triumphant opening of Kitchen Dog Theater's new home with the critically acclaimed and member-created show Pompeii!!  Then Arsenic and Old Lace and Home, I'm Honey at Pocket (plus Werewolf of London in the Fall) and then the third and last installment of Stage West's Sherlock Holmes series, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Ghost Machine.

Scenic Designer Soaks

 

Public Domain image courtesy of Picryl

Today was my first day of painting for this year's production of Ebenezer Scrooge at Pocket Sandwich Theatre... and my most recent Scenic Soak TM.

A proper Scenic Soak TM involves a tired paint-stained wretch at the end of a longish day that  involved ladders and buckets; a long cool drink, preferably alcoholic; a hot water filled bathtub; soap, of course; and a pumice stone.  Because nowadays when most paints are also primers, the paint you painted yourself with doesn't come off easily!

(This is true for the latex house paints commonly used at many theaters.  True scenic paint may not.)

A lovely ritual.  I recommend it.

Be sure to rinse the tub thoroughly! afterwards... because paint flecks don't come off the tub easily either.

Did I Promise to Post More Often?

 Hahahaha!

A linocut print of the city of Ptolith, in Aenoriia - art by Clare Floyd DeVries, 

   world by AstrophagyMC

I have been really busy though this Fall; traveling, a little theater, and writing on a long-form fiction project related to those imaginary Minecraft cities I've been helping build for so long.

Now I'm illustrating that and discovering the fun of linocut printing!  I'm currently pretty inky myself and my house is even more filled with little teeny tiny slivers of linoleum... everywhere.  They stick to bathtubs BTW.  

(Now I bury you in examples to make up for so few posts.  Brace yourself!)

I love that these crazy prints combine my architecture, Minecraft, D&D, writing, and art.

Theater?  Less busy, because of traveling.  But my set for the Phantom of the Opera is onstage at Pocket Sandwich Theatre in Carrollton right now.  A fun melodrama!  Go see it and throw some popcorn.

The Phantom of the Opera melodrama, Pocket Sandwich Theatre

Summer Busy

 In a bit of a break from theater design I've been busy with summer visits - to and fro - as well as swimming, holidays, and a lot of Minecraft, D&D, and writing.  

In the Venn diagram of those last three plus artsiness, I've been teaching myself how to make linocut prints.  (My house is now covered in teeny tiny slivers of linoleum and smears of ink.)

Part of this effort is just for the fun of it (I've always liked woodcuts and this is a similar aesthetic, but cheaper/easier for a beginner) and part of this is a attempt to learn to design more simply and boldly, and to not lean so heavily on color.  

A.I.

Just read a fascinating - and depressing - conversation HERE between a human writer,  Heather Havrilesky, and A.I. which is pretty well summed up by this quote from it:

"About the feeling of watching something that was supposed to help instead smooth over the real with the plausible."

I read with increasing horror...

What's Up?

                                        

 First off, I got to see Kitchen Dog Theater's production of The Grown-Ups last night at Samuel Grand Park.  Really liked it!  Very topical.  Read more about it HERE.

Second, I've been off traveling to California and back, but now that I AM back, theater is going full steam ahead: I'm reprising last year's Sherlock set for Stage West's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes and the Fallen Souffle and designing a set at Pocket Sandwich Theatre for the farce, Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Here are a few pics of Sherlock last year - this year will see only modest changes, mostly to furnishings or set dressing... plus adding a chandelier that I need to find!

Getting busy!

Old Fashioned Drops

 A friend of mine, Joseph Cummings, recently designed Into the Breeches! for Mainstage Irving / Las Colinas.  

He used several beautiful, old-fashioned painted drops created by Dallas's former Wolf Studio.  This was an important theatrical design and scene shop - founded by Peter Wolf - that once created all the scenery for Dallas Summer Musicals (now Broadway Dallas).  Many local designers and painters worked there, including the noted designer Bob Lavallee and the late Wade Giampa.  (Who was an enormous help to me as I was finding my feet as a theater designer.  So kind and so much missed...)

THIS is the kind of thing that studio routinely produced!

 

Drops by Wolf Studio, reused for Into the Breeches! Mainstage Irving/Las Colinas, designer Joseph Cummings

Joseph has started researching the history of Wolf Studio - as I hear more about it I'll pass on more pictures.  UPDATE:  Read Joseph's blog HERE for a history of Peter Wolf's studio and these particular drops.

That downstage teaser, the swoopy proscenium design, was created in the 1970s for a touring regional / Broadway production of Sound of Music.

Addendum:  When I designed Into the Breeches! a few years earlier at Stage West, I too felt the need for painted drops... so their shop's talented scenic painter painted a few small "banners" AKA "legs":

Lincoln's Birthday

 This quote from Lincoln's 1862 address to Congress was pointed out to me today:

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Happy Moments

 

I got to design and build an Ent-ish tree!

For Pocket Sandwich Theatre's Herbbits, Wizards & Borks, Oh My!

Hope and Gratitude

In this depressing time - and it's not just the gray cold weather - I'm trying to find and share hopeful, thoughtful things.  

From today's email, this thought from national treasure Dolly Parton:

"I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life, because I learned early that if you don't, you get disappointed a lot. If you do, you might be pleasantly surprised quite often.

I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. I re-read passages from my favorite books. I hold the little treasures that somebody special gave me. By keeping my eyes open for unexpected joys, I find the world gives back more than we sometimes think."

          Source: Author James Clear's newsletter and originally from Dream More (paraphrased)

What "little things" am I grateful for today?

Well, the sun is shining.  My heat is working great.  My tropical plants, pining inside by the window during our cold snap, can go play outside again tomorrow.  And in the news... well, hum right on past most of the news... but one January 6th insurrectionist has refused her pardon because she now realizes she was wrong.

There are rays of hope. 

I'm grateful.