Big Fish

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've been CRAZY busy.  Between the holidays, visitors, and deadlines there's just been no time (or energy) to blog.  But here's a little of what I've been up to...

Big Fish for Junior Players.

A lovely, very successful, show.

Junior Players' Big Fish  A stylized Alabama river bank, which framed the show.

Schematic design sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

Junior Players' Big Fish. Photo by DiAnn L'Roy

Among the time intensive parts of this show were creating the abstract "Spanish moss"... made from string and drinking straws and beads... and hours and hours of stringin'.  Thank goodness for volunteers!  Thank you, thank you!

Here's a closer look:

Very hard to capture them on film, but in the theater these lacy dingle-dangles caught the light and added a lot of atmosphere.  (They also helped lower the apparent height of the proscenium, which helped better scale it to the young performers.  This is a HUGE stage.  The proscenium is 30' high and, what, 60' wide?  Immense.  Very nice facility though - my first design at the Moody Performance Hall in Dallas' Arts District.)

So, a few more looks:

Big Fish - sketch for "The War" scene

Hard to catch on film is... well, really, any of the larger setting around the actors.  Photographers naturally concentrate on faces, but I assure you, there's some pretty spiffy bunting hanging there above those faces.  See what I mean?  

(The bunting you can't hardly see was painted at about 10:30 at night - past my bedtime -  so their style is, um, loose.  While other things were painted on the venue's loading dock on the coldest day Dallas has seen for a while.  My volunteers and I were blue... and that was before we spilled the bucket of blue paint.)

Big Fish - this photo and the following ones are  by DiAnn L'Roy

Photos are great, but they just don't - can't - give the whole experience. 

Of course, sketches can't really show the experience either... they just try.

Big Thanks due to the many volunteers (especially my beaders n' painters!), to the TD!, to the amazing directors and other designers (costumes! lights!  wow!), to the incredible Junior Players organization, and most of all to the talented and hard-working actors.  A wonderful show.

Scenic Painting - Backdrops

The traditional painted backdrop doesn't happen much when I set design... In part because I  just don't design for many proscenium theaters, but mostly because I don't lean toward the picture-postcard-backdrop school of thought - for me, sets are more environment than picture.

But Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale seemed to demand a backdrop.

Besides, for once, I had a real, bonafide, not-me! talented scenic painter on board.

So here's the process:

Schematic design sketch for Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

Yellow tracing paper, ink, and colored pencil

First came the rough sketch, showing the theater seating (thrust, with seats and balconies around three sides).  This was mainly to explain to the director what I was proposing.  The idea was to create a "tapestry" appropriate to the court scenes with which the play begins (and that reappear in Act II), but one that would also fit as the environment for the outdoor scenes.  A bleak winter woods.  Prowled by bears.

Design development sketch for Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

Yellow tracing paper, ink, watercolor pencil, colored pencil, and CAD

Here's the next sketch, just the backdrop itself because the frame is in another downstage plane.  The center part of the view will also be in another plane, back about a foot from the rest, and attached to a huge sliding door that opens for the final "statue" scene.

Color rendering for Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale 

Vellum, watercolor, watercolor pencil, and some colored pencil

I struggled with this.

Above is the final rendering that the scenic painters would work from.

 Progress photos of the backdrop for Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

Here are progress photos.  Unfortunately, the backdrop was too tall to fit on the scene shop's painting frame.  (This is a sort of elevator-easel that moves up and down so the painter doesn't need ladders.  Very cool!  I desperately wanted to see it in action... but it's only 20' tall.  This drop was 28'.)  So it was painted in the Opera Dept.'s rehearsal hall.  (Thanks Opera!)

Progress photo of Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

onstage scenic painting - backdrop, frame, and floor.  Notice how that tree stump has developed!

Then the not-quite-finished drop was transferred to the theater.  You can see how the center section has been cut out at that sliding door.  We tried to attached that portion of the view - painted on muslin -  TO the door, but in the end it had to be painted ON the door itself.  Notice the progress of the painted "stone" floor.

The Winter's Tale, at Leontes' court

Photo by Amy Peterson, courtesy of Trinity Shakespeare Festival

Here is the backdrop in backdrop/tapestry mode for Leontes' court.

The Winter's Tale, at Leontes' court

Photo by Amy Peterson, courtesy of Trinity Shakespeare Festival

And in the "chapel" scene.  Note the gorgeous floor.

The Winter's Tale

Photo by Amy Peterson, courtesy of Trinity Shakespeare Festival

Stage daylight lets you see the beautifully painted stump and other details.  Like, below, the distant view of a fortified city.

The Winter's Tale

Photo by Amy Peterson, courtesy of Trinity Shakespeare Festival

A big shout-out to scenic painter Kaitlyn Donovan and her assistants!  Thanks.  Gratitude also for the beautifully detailed build.  (There was some coolo laser cutting technology involved in those oval corner plaques on the frame.)  Props worked hard on great faux wool bales for the final "shepherd" scenes.

Trinity Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale

The shepherds throw a party... complete with wool bales and piano.

Photo by Amy Peterson

And thanks for the lovely lighting!  Nice costumes too, huh?  This was just a beautiful show and an accomplished one all round, I thought.  Directing, acting, dance, song...  Critics seemed to agree - always nice.

Back to the drawing board... a little battered and coffee stained.

Oh, remember that rendering?  Here it is back home to my studio... having clearly worked for its living at the scene shop.  

Lessons learned?  (There are always lessons to learn.)

1)  Get better and faster at watercolor.  So I'm now taking a watercolor class.

2)  I really like this pro-scenic painter thing - get more of 'em! more often!

3)  Encase the rendering in plastic next time.

Copyright on the Internet

I've recently exchanged emails with a very nice photographer about the use of photos on the internet.  Raised a lot of issues.  This particular photographer - and I think most others - is having a very big problem with people snatching their work without permission or credit.

The idea of copyright on a photo by its photographer is something the public - especially on-line - just doesn't understand.

The confusion is natural: a photo, at least a documentary life-as-it-is sort of photograph... well, it just doesn't seem created to an ordinary person.  People can, generally, understand that a drawing requires an artist or that a clay bowl has a potter, but a photo...?  Isn't that just life (almost by definition Public Domain) caught as anyone can with their camera-phone?  (Anyone but me, I'm a terrible photographer!)  Most people do not look at an unposed, unmanipulated, documentary photo and even think Photographer.  They see only the subject.  Which might well be in the public domain.

Actually, I kinda lean this way myself.

I tend to agree with Wikimedia and others' theory that a straightforward documentary photo that reproduces a public domain subject should, itself, be public domain. I mean, the Mona Lisa is loooong out of copyright; why should an ordinary just-the-facts-ma'am photo of her be copyrighted?  The next 100 pro or amateur photos will be identical to it.  And how else can the Public of the public domain interact with Mona without some photo?  Not like the Louvre's going to let anyone take her home on loan.

Or like paying to use that generic photo will help Da Vinci pay rent.  The point of copyright is to help support the people - artist or engineer etc. - who make a New Thing.  Copyright is intended to encourage innovation.

Now Andy Warhol's version of Mona Lisa?  THAT obviously deserves copyright because it is unique to Warhol and his experience of the painting.  Likewise, if a photographer took a non-documentary version of Da Vinci's painting... strangely and uniquely lit, perhaps, or manipulated  in the lab or digitally into some personal vision, then that too would be copyrighted.  (Please remember these are my personal musings here, not actual copyright Law, which is weird and sometimes deeply stupid.)

Likewise, to my way of thinking, most what I'll call Travel Photography ought, I think, to be uncopyrightable.    The pyramids, for instance...  It'd take an awfully special photo to see those in a unique way after humans have been staring at them for millenia and photographing them for more than a century.  Still possible though.

Photographers are in a similar position now to where portrait painters were when photography was invented: the mere recording of fact is suddenly possible for anyone and therefore devalued; what IS still valuable is a unique artistic viewpoint.  Sargeant's painted portraits do not just record facts about his sitters.  Ansel Adams' photos of Yosemite do not just record the shapes of rocks.

I dare all the camera-phone folks to match their insights.

Meanwhile, here's a reminder of actual copyright law online or off - as I understand it.  (I do try to obey copyright law.)  All those pretty pictures out there, a click away, were taken by someone.  And those someones have the only right to use the image unless you get permission or they have given it a Creative Commons license (read that fine print) or declared it Public Domain OR (and this is a big, messy, legal-and-artistic OR) you use it in a Fair Use way.

Fair Use is a whole 'nother post!

Anyway, in the process of my emailing on this topic, I created a little sketch to replace a photo so that I would have no copyright questions hanging.  Here's that sketch:

Sketch of alphabet blocks by Clare Floyd DeVries - gifted to the Public Domain

In the spirit of... neighborliness or something, I want to just hand this sketch out to anyone -  do what you want with it.  As much as the law allows I gift it to the Public Domain.  Fly!  Be free.  If you want to credit me, that's kind; if you find a way to make a gadjillion dollars off it and want to send me some bucks, thank you very much, but you don't need to.  It's all yours.

ADDENDUM x 2: For a fascinating legal discussion of copyright, fair use, and photography read this article at Art in America HERE about the recent court decision in the Richard Prince case, which finds in favor of "transforming" photos by others into new works.  And HERE is another court decision that is chilling to claims of photographers for the "transformative" nature of photography itself.  In this case the photo was of copyrighted art by someone else.  (My gut feeling about documentary versus unique view-point manipulated photos may actually hold some legal water.)

Anyway, photographers and photography are clearly under siege today... And the front line may be the internet.

Theatrical Sketches

I just discovered over at The Public Domain Review sketches by the famous theater director Stanislavski for Othello.  Including a couple of little thumbnail sketches for blocking.  HERE.

A sketch by Stanislavski for Othello, Wikimedia / Public Domain Review

Fun.  Free.  Check out the rest of the site for many wonders: fantastic historic maps, illustrations for Robinson Crusoe, a pictorial history of Santa Claus, Charles Babbage's brain...

Catch-Up

Okay, okay, I've been slow about posting lately - blame the IRS.  The tax deadline is breathing down my neck.  Day after day - or so it feels - I sit at my board sorting receipts from the whole past year.  (To sketch for yesterday's production meeting, I had to total yet more receipts just to free my drawing board.)  I find taxes stressful.

Any one else?  Raise your hand.

Anyway.  More posts will be forthcoming eventually.

Meanwhile, I can heartily recommend other reading: the historical mysteries of Barbara Hambly set in the New Orleans of 1833 and later, with hero Benjamin January.  Start with Free Man of Color.  Good reads!  I happened across these because I'm researching a slightly younger New Orleans (1790-1820).

I haven't written too much here about my trip there last fall (afraid to dissipate my head of steam), but I can say that it's fun to take a vacation with a research goal.  It adds more interest to sightseeing when you're always mentally editing your surroundings: was this here then?  Would historic character X or Y have stood here like this?  Would character Z have smelled this?  Tasted that?  Been cold and muddy or sun-baked?  Surroundings become populated with ghosts you bring along with you - DIY haunting!  Of course, New Orleans is an especially easy place to do this because history just oozes out of the brick, but if you do your homework most places have more history than you'd think.  For instance, there's a mundane-looking hardware store just blocks away where I'd never work - never shop - because I remember the ex-employee of the ex-sporting goods store who slit the throats of several ex-coworkers for the sake of the weekend till and boxes of expensive sneakers.  Digging through old newspapers would turn up those facts... if you looked.  (The place has gotta be haunted.  Not that I'm superstitious - ha!)

Lately I've been dabbling in history.  The Journal of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, one of America's earliest and most distinguished architects is a fascinating read.  He visited New Orleans in about 1818 - died there too.  As did his son, also an architect, and yet another Greek Revival architect, Barthelemy Lafon.  All of yellow fever.  We forget how lucky we are to live in a time and place when epidemics are not the scourges they were.

This period of the War of 1812 - which we hardly remember - turns out to be an important turning point in the U.S. and Europe, laying foundations for later events: the industrial revolution, both the plantation system and slavery's abolition, the Trail of Tears and western expansion...  History is more interesting than I'd guessed.  But then fifth grade Texas History left out all: pirates; cannibals; slave smuggling; slave-smuggling, knife-wielding not-so-heroic heroes of the Alamo; and beautiful quadroon slaves offered up to Mexican generals as a military strategy.

The battle of the Alamo - public domain image

All the interesting stuff!

HERE's a link to what I did write about New Orleans - a bit about Plaza d'Italia, that post-modern fountain.

A Brand New Boise Opens!

Last night was the Opening for my latest show: A Brand New Boise.  Check it out - a very good conversation-after-the-show production.  Circle Theatre, Fort Worth.

I made the day of it visiting around Dallas and in Fort Worth.

First was the ribbon cutting, here in Dallas, of the new addition to Woodrow Wilson High School.  I liked the new architecture - modern, yet sympathetic with the historic Elizabethan-Revival original.  (Well, loosely Eliz-Revival, I'd say the gorgeous auditorium leans a bit more Classical.)  There's a particularly interesting new glass entry/linkage piece where old building meets new.  And the restoration of parts of the old fabric is welcome and respectful, like restoring the handsome Art Deco-ish chandeliers in that auditorium.  Nice job!

After that, drive to Fort Worth and spend some time in the Kimbell Art Museum's Bernini exhibit.  It's particularly interesting because it focuses on Bernini's clay "sketch" models for his marble final works... with many, many sketches and both small study models and larger modelos. The sketches are beautiful, often in red chalk on gray/beige paper.  The clay sculpture are terracotta and often breathtaking.  Full of vigor and personality.

Bernini's terracotta model for the "Moor" Fountain in Rome - Kimbell Art Museum

The evidence of the great artist as craftsman and human are fascinating and sometimes touching - as when,  more than two hundred years later, you see his fingerprint in the clay.

You can also see where Bernini was thrifty with paper: there's often another sketch on the back of  the sheet or sharing it.  The sketches themselves are clearly working drawings and studies.  One rather beautiful drawing of a saint's legs shares its paper higgle-piggle with what are almost on-the-telephone-doodles of different ways to treat an architectural detail.  Bernini's drawings are sometimes formal presentation renderings in ink and wash, but are most often fast chalk sketches of fragments or of the whole composition, made as he thought his way through the design.

On the terracotta models you can still see the marks of measuring (in order to increase the size of the next sculpture) or of inscribed lines (as Bernini figures out how to divide the stone version into individual blocks) or where one sculpture was actually sawed into pieces in order to mock up that process.  Like the sketches, there are even a fragmentary models: the surprising and beautiful study model of just the hind end of a horse.

There are saints, whole rafts of angels, fabulous fountains, (love the River Gods!), and a gorgeous lion.

Gathered from museums all over the world, this one of a kind exhibit is a Must See.

(Be sure to visit Clodion's terracotta  study, The River Rhine Separating the Waters, downstairs too... made about a hundred years later.)

Gesture Sketches

Yeesh.  Yesterday's POST  about my visit to the Impressionist exhibit at the Kimbell got complicated.

So... In lieu of pretty colored photos of those paintings, here are my fast gesture-drawings of them.

You'll see that these sketches are much more limited - no color for one thing - and there's little attempt be accurate in proportion or complete in detail.  But the nice thing about gesture-drawing as I was taught it is that it can catch a surprising amount of the feeling of subject.  These particular sketches weren't intended for publication, were meant as memory joggers, but yet... they do that job surprisingly well.

Portrait of Madame Monet by Renoir, gesture sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

With this sketch I wanted to catch the Madonna-icon-like composition and the dark emphasis of Madame Monet's head (oddly enough, both aspects are less obvious in photos).  I think this is one of the reasons artists are taught to study by and through drawing - it makes you LOOK and NOTICE.

Various paintings from the Clark Art Institute at the Kimbell Art Museum, sketches by Clare Floyd DeVries

On this sketchbook page you can see my slap-happy composition of notes and sketches.  

I have a post card of Berthe Morisot's The Bath in front of me as I type; my scribble actually catches the interrupted-in-motion pose of the woman fixing her hair pretty well, but misses her challenging stare.  It's a lovely painting, all pastel-like pinks and that distinctive Impressionist blue, so much a part of Renoir's palette.  (The audio tour calls the bathtub "white" but its lining looks darn blue to me, its outside copper or rust).  Despite the pretty "feminine" colors and pose, this girl might be a tough cookie.

Also on this page is a fast-fast gesture drawing of Renoir's Sleeping Girl which, for me, ought to be titled Striped Socks.  There's something wonderfully real and quirky about those socks with blue stripes.  Cradled by the warm red chair, the girl's head, sleepy pose, drooping chemise... all standard loose woman issue... she could be anyone; but the sleeping cat is quite particular and those socks?  Unique.  I believe in this girl because of her socks.

You'll note that I wrote about Renoir's Onions but did not sketch them.  A B&W sketch would miss everything important: the wonderful brushwork and the color - the shimmer and translucence of coppery onion skin, the creamy, shadowy folds in the white cloth, the blue of the wall.

Saint-Charles, Eagny by Pissarro, Clark Art Institute at the Kimbell, sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries

Here I tried to catch only the tones of Pissarro's landscape - the darkness of these slender trunked trees against the sunlight.  There was a thin, thin, thin golden edge to the crest of the hill that I could not sketch, only label.  This view is painted at a long-shadows time of day (feels like morning to me) so that trees and hills are backlit and edges are gilded.  Unusually for Pissarro, this is painted in Pointillist style - an insanely slow way to get paint on a canvas.  No wonder Pissarro moved on to other methods, but this painting is very beautiful.

Okay.  There's the  Impressionists illustrated.  

Good show - at the Kimbell Art Museum - go see it!

BTW About copyright for my own sketches and photos.  Anyone who wishes to use them electronically (as in a blog) or Pin to them, or copy them for personal use or, heck, for trading cards! is welcome - though no selling them, please.  If you would credit them to me and link back, I'd appreciate it.

Radio Silence

Sorry for the sparse postings... I'm in the middle of construction drawings for Seven with One Blow: or the Brave Little Kid and, as soon as that ink dries, leaping into the same type of for-the-builder drawings for my B&W, The Frequency of Death!  In the holding pattern behind those are design sketches for The Diary of Anne Frank.  Then starting Collapse for Kitchen Dog.

Plus I'm writing on The Project.

I'm beginning to develop some momentum... but also an increasing terror as I begin to realize just what a HUGE undertaking I've undertook.  The illustrations alone...  Scary.

the Golden Mean proportions (and Fibonacci series) public domain image

But I do have a juicy post coming soon about my recent jaunt to Houston, where there was Art!  Architecture! and nearby Seafood!

Set Designer's Day - Meetings

Funny how meetings seem to flock together.  Yesterday turned into a meeting day - and pretty much the whole day once I reread both scripts (Seven with One Blow or the Brave Little Kid  and The Diary of Anne Frank); added notes and questions to both scripts; doodled; and then actually, you know, met.

Public domain image

Fun meetings with both directors to talk through the plays, the acting space, and what the set needed to accomplish.  Now I'm full of bubbling ideas.

Which is a good thing, because I need to have sketches for Seven by Tuesday!