Architectural Sketching

And it works for theater design too!

I sometimes drop by Jim Leggitt's "Drawing Shortcuts" website to see really excellent renderings and to learn something to improve my own drawing skills.

He uses a totally fearless mix of media and methods to create lovely, fresh, simple (seemingly) freehand (looking) architectural sketches.  He seems to usually start with a SketchUp model and/or a photo, then adds in hand drawing and coloring using mostly markers and some pencil. He might overlay and trace computer or photographic material or draw directly on top of them.

Amazing!  I particularly like his use of entourage people, plants, umbrellas etc.  (A lot better than that same sad ficus tree or little-girl-with-balloon I saw used back in the day.)

Check 'em out HERE with his post on creating sketches that show the repurposing of a urban alley.  Drawn as illustrations for a lecture... I'm wondering if he'll ever lecture near me?

Phone photo to hand drawn sketch - Jim Leggitt / Drawing Shortcuts

Image copyright is Mr. Leggitt's of course, believed Fair Use as in a review.

At any rate I'm vowing to use more SketchUp and photos in creating my own theatrical drawings.  I'm the Queen of Tracing Stuff already, why not make that tracing more 3D-ish?  (And it'll help keep computer skills up at the same time.)

Haircuts for Radio and Other Weird Things

It's been a busy month or two.

At the moment I'm set dressing Wait Until Dark for Stage West and construction is starting on The Winter's Tale for Trinity Shakespeare, while I'm starting sketches for Circle's Don't Talk to the Actors.

Wait Until Dark, Stage West, design by Clare Floyd DeVries

But what was that about haircuts?

Yesterday a videographer for our local public radio station, KERA, followed me around the stage at Stage West, watching me safety-pin up giant (16' long!) B&W photocopies of the outside-the-basement-window view.  When this got boring (set designer with nice hair cut climbs ladder again!), the TD took us on an Alice's rabbit hole tour through the darkened corners of the theater.  We looked at ancient steel safes and old sofas up nifty counter-weighted folding attic stairs... Fun!  Explore the Theater could make a great virtual reality game.

I think the talk got more interesting too as the TD and I back-n-forthed over scenic problems.

Why all this videoed ridiculousness?

Well, KERA's Art & Seek has gotten a grant to document an artist a week for a year in a how-the-work-happens sort of thing.  As I understand it, there'll be a little bit on the radio and more (like vid) on the website.  Cool idea, huh?

Anyway, 52 weeks, 52 artists... starting, oddly, with me.

So that's weird.  On Monday they're coming by my studio to interview me.  (I'll be vacuuming till then.)  

More weirdness was my battle with the big rendering for the big big backdrop for The Winter's Tale.  I mean, I can design and I can draw... but painting... meh.  So I struggled with it for hours trying to meet the deadline - to the point where, when family arrived, I had to ask 'em whether the result was terrible or okay.  I couldn't tell.  (The consensus was "use it.")

Backdrop for The Winter's Tale, Trinity Shakespeare - design by Clare Floyd DeVries

So there I was yesterday, presenting this alleged artwork to a real painter - the scenic artist - with, as it happened, another very good scenic designer / painter whose opinion I respect looking over my shoulder.  

All he said was, "Colored pencil?"

"Watercolor pencil and colored pencil," I answered.  "But don't look at the technique, just the color."

Actually, that scene shop is absolutely stuffed with good painters who will, naturally, look at my, you should forgive the expression, "technique."  

I have now vowed to take an official watercolor class.

Renderings

In my files I just happened across this image of a gouache rendering by the late Wade Giampa of his set design for Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby.

Gorgeous.

Wingspan Theatre Company's production of The Play About the Baby.

Fun with Colored Pencils

I can't reveal the final design yet (ticket buyers have to have perks, right?) , but I've just finished coloring my elevation drawing for In the Other Room: the Vibrator Play.  Coloring is fun, whatever your age, and I kinda like the way this show is looking.  After a few more minutes of lunch-munching and typing, I'm off to the copy place, then to meet the director... to see what he thinks of this.

I have to put in a good word for ink and colored pencil as rendering media:  ink lines give crisp definition, detail, and copy well, while colored pencil is fast, colorful - bold or subtle as desired - and wonderfully erasable when you goof.  More forgiving than theater-traditional gouche or watercolor!

Here's a different ink/pencil rendering for a kids' Easter show at Casa Manana a few years back - a fast-fast-fast sketch.  Try it yourself.

Like crayons, the bigger the box of colors, the more fun!