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.  

"Traditional"

A designer friend pointed out an interesting article in The Telegraph (HERE) that talks about the disservice "traditional" theater design habits pose for actors of color...   Basically, that a "traditionally" dark colored set for Othello can cause a dark-skinned Othello to fade into the background.

To which I say, "duh."

Doesn't that seem like a likely hazard a set designer ought to expect?  Ditto the lose-their-face chances of overly dark or, say, skin-tone-brown costumes.  Wake up people!

Now, lighting designers may have a more legitimate problem, in that many commonly used lighting color gels don't flatter darker skin tones... but solving that problem is just a matter of a little forethought.  LED lighting is tricky mostly because, as far as I can see, LED's natural color range doesn't look right on any person of any skin color.  I've certainly witnessed a few lighting designers struggle before finding the right color.  Then again, if Elpheba in Wicked can be made to look green and glorious next to her pinky sister-witch, any actor can have a perfect, flattering light.

From my observation of shows where I've had African-American casts, the flattering color thing has usually been more a lighting issue than a set color one.  Of three shows: one had a set with strong colors and natural texture/colors where darker skin tones allowed the set to be more bold than it might have been and lighting used wonderful, saturated, crazy colors; the second was a world of caramel where the set faded into a nostalgic, sepia backdrop, costumes were mostly subdued, but lighting made faces pop; and the third show struggled a bit...  The set was minimal - just a warm/tawny oak floor and the cool gray of the theater's walls.  Costumes varied, but had definite color, and lighting - eventually - found a way to accentuate actors' faces.  I think the secret was when a blue wash was added to the theater walls that backlit and emphasized the actors.  Experiment!  That's  key.

Ruined by Echo Theatre - notice the deep deep saturated color in the background and the flattering light on the featured actress.  The bright colors of the set appeared and disappeared as the colors of the lighting changed... which was kinda fun.

Hard turn in this conversation:  Also "traditional"?

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

Both freedoms are under siege by this president and his supporters.  Just in the past couple days the press has been derided - again - as Fake News or Enemies of the People and presidential critics have been insulted.  Former CIA director John Brennan had his security clearance revoked.  The man who helped lead the capture of Osama bin Laden can't be trusted with U.S, secrets?!  In what alternate universe is that true?  No, he just pissed off the president.  This is petty retribution and warning to others.

What can you personally do?

Lots:

1)  Call your representative and senator's offices.  Protest this un-American behavior.  Every.  Single.  Time.

2)  Subscribe to your local paper.

3)  Then subscribe to a national or international paper and to favorite pod casts or news radio or blogs etc.

4)  Read/listen/watch news and opinion from different and even uncomfortable sources.  See what others are seeing.

5)  Vote for candidates that uphold ideas you value, like honest, polite debate on issues, not name-calling, sound bites, or group-think.

6)  Speak out yourself.  

Don't use it?  You might lose it.

Tech: Lighting Color Fun

Tech Day is mostly for lighting and sound.  

Set is (you hope) nearly finished.  (Or maybe it's not.)  And Tech - or Technical Rehearsal - is a day to push scenic elements around, to roll wagons, and slam doors and generally make sure that the physical elements of the production are working.  Actors are there - their participation vital! - but they're usually bored out of their skulls at the stops and starts and sheer tedium of it all.

Meanwhile, it's wildly exciting verging on panicked for stage management and designers.  Especially for sound and lighting.  (Costume is madly finishing things for the costume parade and Dress rehearsals coming soon.  Basically, you don't want costumes on stage yet: the paint isn't all dry.)

Here's what lighting was up to at yesterday's Tech for Echo Theater's production of Ruined.

I'm loving the colors glowing through the slats of Mama's Bar!

(Thanks to the eagle-eyed company members who spotted their neighbor's old fence out on the curb for the trash!  Great weathered texture.)  The rest of the set?  Well, someday soon I'll actually have all the scenic painting done.  Fingers crossed...

Color Names

Finding good names for colors is a vital skill for paint companies, but it's hard.  

I understand that, years ago, the endless torment of trying to decide whether to call that beige-y pink "Baby's Face Pink" or "Seashell Blush" drove one company to throw up its hands.  (Corporations are legally people, people generally have hands, ergo corporations have hands.)  They decided to just give colors numbers!  Briefly.  Because, turns out, #346-A7 doesn't sell as well as "Rhapsodic Red."

It's a problem.

Well, check out this post at Ars Technica on using artificial intelligence to take over the job...   HERE  Humans ain't outa work yet.

My favorite AI generated names might be "Cremper Viulet" or "Kold Of Tale" - which would make great fairy tale character names.  "Blue Child" (a pink) is a another favorite.  But "Copper Panty?" ...bet that name sells!

Believed public domain image - found HERE with others!

On the subject of corporations as people... one of my trusty art and set dressing supply sources, Hobby Lobby, has just been caught illegally buying Iraqi antiquities, with the money possibly funding Islamic terrorists.  This confused me because, um, why?  New selections in Home Decor?  Or in... Ceramics?  But it seems they're starting a Biblical museum.

Sigh.

I've been trying to overlook Hobby Lobby's no-workers-here-get-birth-control-'cause-religion stand on the theory that workers can quit (theoretically) if that offends them.  But I feel pretty strongly about knowingly fueling the stolen art market.  Plus, you know, terrorists.

So... 

Guess Michaels will be getting most of my business now.  

(Can't believe this, but I just took time to read Michaels' "Code of Business Conduct and Ethics" and to check their Better Business rating!  They sound good.  In fact, their "Code" seems admirable in content, presentation, and concrete examples.  I'll hope they follow it.) 

Theater doesn't just talk about ethics, it requires 'em.

Color Wheel

Going through some old files, I found this sketch for a class on interior design that I taught ages ago...

Color War!

Wired has the best write-up I've seen on the feud between artists Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple over the rights to the blackest BLACK and the pinkest PINK. 

HERE.

Public domain image from Publicdomainpictures.net

Gummy Bears for Lunch

Sometimes a set designer's life gets a tad hectic.

At the moment I have three shows all building and all in Fort Worth - Wait Until Dark at Stage West, The Winter's Tale at Trinity Shakespeare Festival, and Don't Talk to the Actors at Circle Theatre.

A whole lotta car time.

And not much lunch time while driving between theaters (and the fabric stores etc. etc.).

I usually try to keep something healthy-ish in the car for when I'm desperately hungry, but yesterday lunch turned out to be an Opening Night present from Circle Theater's Under the Skin...  gummy bears from one of the actors.

Thanks Uncle Gummy!

ADDENDUM:  I forgot to add this link to a cool study of color palettes in films HERE.

Crunch-Time

You know that mad rush to meet the deadline...

The last few days have been long, tiring ones, trying to get the set for Uptown Players' production of Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike ready in time for photos last night.

I've been popping up and down in the lift like a demented Jack-in-the Box, painting stone walls, then the carpenters popped up and down in the same lift (plus ladders) raising a faux slate roof over an (also faux) breezeway and plopping my weather-vane in place (an even more faux thing, there being neither breeze nor weather inside the theater... and that's just great, thank you, because we've had plenty of freezing weather outside it lately).

Designer, set dresser, TD, carpenters... The whole gang has been really sweating it (despite the cold), racing against the deadline.  This show has a lot of dressing what with its interior furnishings and decoration and its exterior lawn etc.

So.  Busy.

Then yesterday, just as we were starting to see the end of our labors in sight, just as we were starting to think, "We're gonna make it, we're gonna make it, almoooost made it..." a nervous management came to tell us that icy weather meant that photos had to be postponed until today.

He expected us to be mad - instead we immediately and gratefully sat down to rest.

Now, after an evening with my feet up and a good night's sleep, I'll just saunter back into the theater today to add little details, some wood grain on the stairs, a few orange flowers to balance out stage right, that kind of thing.  As far as I'm concerned, the perfect project is one where, once you think you're done, you get the gift of a little extra time to sit and to stare, to evaluate, then to make those few small tweaks that really finish the design.

This time it's orange flowers.

Image courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net

Color Junkie

I love color.

Years ago I worked with a very talented interior designer who could do beautiful work using color, but specialized in a sort of natural non-colors only palette, the natural pale birch through ebony shades of wood - white and off-white and unbleached pales and black of granite or leather.  Really beautiful, nuanced, textural interiors.

But where was the red? I wondered.

Red!  how could anyone resist it?  Some famous interior designer (wish I remembered who) said that
"No room is finished until there is red in it."

Exactly.

Except I feel that way about most colors.  (Except for maybe what Winston Churchill called "poor brown.")  Shoot, even brown - warm, friendly brown - has its charms.  I love color!  Can't get enough of it.

Matisse's red room - believed public domain image

I've been reading or rereading a couple great books on the subject lately:

Roy G. Biv: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color, by Jude Stewart and Pantone: The 20th Century in Color, by... Pantone I guess.  The color-standard experts, you know the ones.

Roy G. Biv is a little book full of the stories, folklore, history, and science of color.  Fascinating!  Here are a couple quotes from it that caught my eye:

"Red, of course, is the color of the interior of our bodies,  In a way it's inside out, red." 
- Anish Kapoor.  And...

"A thimbleful of red is redder than a bucketful." 
- Henri Matisse.  A man who knew his Red.

Pantone's 20th Century book, on the other hand, is less literary and more visual, though no less historical, a decade by decade look at the last century's color palettes.  Using an image from each period - a painting, an ad, an object - Pantone color samples are pulled from each.  Not only is this an interesting and beautiful book... I've found it very useful in working with directors in establishing the color palettes for theater shows.

(I wrote more about the Pantone book HERE when I got it for Christmas.)

Big Day # 2

After yesterday's post HERE on starting the build for The Lucky Chance, today I start painting it - the real challenge!

Color test for The Lucky Chance

(What to) Coloring Book!

One of my favorite theatrical/architectural presents this season is a book:

PANTONE: The Twentieth Century in Color

Photo from Felt & Wire's interview with the authors

Authors Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker lead the Reader through the changing color schemes of the just-past century, explaining some of the influences, reasons, and technical developments behind changes in color preferences.  Beautifully illustrated.  And always, on the right-hand edge of the page, there's a palette of PANTONE colors keyed to the illustrations and period under discussion.

Incredibly helpful for designers.

PANTONE takes us decade by decade through the colors of fashion and design, from the gentle pastels of ladies' dresses circa 1900, through the psychedelic brights of the 1960s and the dreaded Avocado Green era of the 1970s, and on to the end of the millennium.  What I found most fascinating was the many contradictory color palettes of the 1990s: the Martha Stewart somehow-nostalgic shades; the Anime-bright-pastels; the Zen-like greens and neutrals; the African and Latin inspired hues; and the look-at-me-I'm-conspicuously-consuming! rich tones of the '90s.

I wish they'd go back and make a matching book for the 1800s.

Then for the 1700s.

If you're a designer who ever deals with historic periods - or someone inspired by color - you're going to enjoy this book!  It's a must-have for theater designers I think.

HERE's a good interview with the authors at the bookish website Felt & Wire.  And HERE's an interview with the publisher about the design and making of the book.

Color Schemes

In yesterday's first meeting between the director and the set designer (me) for The God of Carnage, one of the things we discussed was color of the scenery.

(This was after thrashing through the basic approach to the text and determining the best floor plan, including actor entrances, placement of major furniture, and even locating the tulip vase that has to take a dive.)

For thematic reasons and because there are multiple references to Africa in the text - one character is writing a book on the topic - some visual reference seems appropriate... and the director (also a costume designer) just happened to have a piece of fabric with a Kente cloth pattern...

Public domain image of Kente cloth courtesy of Wikipedia

Thus giving me the most important colors for the set!  

(This photo is an approximation - the actual cloth has some green and blue in it too.)  This fabric will be the brightest, boldest, most important source of color on the set; other materials will pick up a few of these colors in more muted shades or, like the floor, will be more neutral wood tones that sympathize with it.

For more on African Kente cloth, read HERE for a brief overview or HERE for a longer discussion that includes color symbolism.

Remote Color Selection

How to get color selections to the painter for base-painting the set when you're long distance?

Paint chips!

The easiest, most effective method I've found is to find a big chain building supply company that's convenient for both you, the designer, and your distant painter.  Then look through paint chips until you find the colors you want and send the names and numbers to your painter, who visits his own store and buys (or matches) the paint.  Voila!  Color matching on remote control.

You could also use Sherwin Williams' new ChipIt! and save yourself the trip to the store. (Earlier POST.)

In this case the show is The Whipping Man in Fort Worth, but I choose the base colors here in Dallas at my local Lowe's, from the Olympic brand paint chips.

Olympic paint colors from Lowe's

The creams and tans will be the "white" of classical columns and the darker "stone" floor.  The mahogany color will be for the faux mahogany (eventually plus wood graining and TLC).  The green subs for wallpaper, and the purples for a distant view of destroyed Richmond, Virginia.  (Post with set elevation HERE.)

Odds are my painter will buy some colors of paint and mix others from the theater's stock.  Unless for a special effect, paints are normally flat latex.

Chip It!

A fun new app for smart phone or computer - Chip It! - lets you choose an image, then match it to Sherwin Williams paint colors.  Pretty cool!

Monet's Waterlilies as analysed by Sherwin Williams' Chip It!

By either coincidence or sheer, contagious coolitude, I was just minutes ago shown this app at an architects' Lunch-n-Learn, then came back to my studio to find it in my email too.

And here's the last POST on Edwin Drood Chip-It!-isized:

Edwin Drood set by Clare Floyd DeVries, coolo colors by Sherwin Williams Chip It!

Color Dims...

Today's paper brought sad news, architect Ricardo Legorreta has died at 80.  Though based in Mexico, Legorreta designed several buildings locally: Dallas' Latino Cultural Center, the IBM campus at Southlake, and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.

Go visit that museum on a sunny day for a wonderful kick of color in the yellow, yellow, YELLOW entry tower and then the deeply BLUE courtyard with its grand old tree.  Legorreta continued the design approach of his mentor Luis Barragan, a blend of Modernism and Mexican tradition noted for clean lines, sculptural volumes, and poetic use of sun and shade and, above all, color.

This was not default color either, not add-on color.  I love this quote by Legorreta:

 "Instead of saying I will make a wall and paint it red, I [say] I will make something red and it will be a wall."

A red wall by Legorreta, photographer unknown, image borrowed from Glamour Drops

FW Museum of Science and History, architect Ricardo Legorreta, photo by David Kozlowski

Another illustration-find (previous) this time at this website for DFW photographer David Kozlowski.  Some wonderful texture and color here.  (I also like his title "Photos Tagged with Brick".)

Fun With Hardware Stores

Yesterday's running around included trips to several building supply places looking for switches and dials to use in the control booth of Frequency of Death.  Hardware stores are fun!  I came home with lots of galvanized "rough" electrical boxes and switch plates and white, not ivory, switches.

Thrift stores (also fun) were my other searching grounds - this time for silver(ish) photo frames.  In a black & white show, it's silver that you need.  I'm actually a little worried that some of the silver I found is a little "off," a little too warm and golden in tone; I may have to spray paint them more silver.

Believed public domain photo messed with.

Trying to avoid all color and tinting?  To find true black, white, or especially gray?  Very difficult.  Look at the world around you.  That black?  Tinted navy blue.  That white?  The faintest possible pink.  That silver?  Slightly, slightly brassy.

Sophisticated House Color

In Wichita this weekend I spotted this bungalow with a very sophisticated paint color scheme.

Set Designer's Day

Today is Build a Tree Day.

photo of Trinity Shakespeare As You Like It courtesy of G. DeVries

Carpenters will assemble  the sono tubes that make the basis of the big double-trunk tree in the photo above and then add strips of thin plywood and fabric to create the swelling toward the roots and bark textures.  While I stand there waving my hands, crying, "A little more toward  center stage, a bit more, a smidge, there!"  In a very important, bossy (and I hope helpful) way.

This is the painted model.  You see the final (non) color scheme.  Funny, I'm a big fan of color so my sets tend to be full of the stuff, but this season started with a black and white show (Death Is No Small Change!), followed by a black/white/gray/silver show (Broadway Our Way), and now by a low-color one (As You Like It); three in a one season.  Obviously my time to learn about value and shading, eh?

Architectural Continuing Ed

I think it's a wise law that architects (and most other professions) have to take continuing education classes in order to maintain their licenses - technology, laws, codes, environmental and other issues just keep changing so much and so fast that it's salmon-swimming-upstream-time to try to keep up.

This week's lunch seminar was on rain screen systems, hosted by Abet Laminate, an Italian company that makes phenolic panels.  Translation?  A rain screen is a sort of outer face that interrupts driving rain and "skins" a building, but is not the ultimate water-proof layer... it's similar to tents with a separate rain fly.  Air movement between the layers helps handle rain penetration, water vapor movement and condensation, and can shade the interior from solar heat gain.

image of U.S. Army tent in Iraq (with rain-fly roof) courtesy of wikipedia

Phenolic panels are essentially the big brother to the plastic laminate sheets used as kitchen counters - much thicker and stronger and just as hospitable to color and pattern.

image of rain screen building with phenolic panels courtesy of Abet Laminate

It's kind of fun to see the same principals being used in this rain-screen building - so much more colorfully!

Art Fest

Sunday I visited the Cottonwood Art Festival in Richardson.   The Festival is always colorful and pleasantly crowded.  Artists' booths are scattered through the park - some in the sun, some in the shade of tall trees - along with bands, food wagons, and a shady outdoor cafe.  There are children and ducks (a fun combination) by the bridge over the pond; kids' crafts; more food; mobiles spinning in the breeze; and more booths filled with fascinating art...  This is one of the best shows around, with a very high standard of work.

Lots of photography this year.  Goldsmith Jo Jennings had her usual booth near the entry, though I noticed (due to the price of gold I'd guess) her work features more stones/ less gold than in other years.  The ceramic alligator-head sculptor wasn't there, but the fantastical-painters couple were, with a wonderful ceramic bust of... a conquistador?  if his helmet were to become a Spanish galleon, that is.

My favorite booth this year belonged to Stephen Dickerson, an artist working on wood panels with acrylic and colored pencil, which creates lovely complex color and a linear quality I like.  I bought a small incised panel with a pair of fish - one with a large, sapient eye.  (The painting below has similar fish, though none with that thoughtful eye.)  There was a large panel with an egret like this but, in the distance, a house on thin marsh-y green-y stilts which I'd love to own.

image courtesy of Stephen Dickerson's website

Cottonwood Art Festival happens twice a year - try to catch it next Fall!