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!

Forbidden Sketching

Sketchbooks are VITAL.

Just saw a recent, highly-irate commentary by Oliver Wainwright on the Victoria & Albert Museum's policy of not allowing photography or sketching! in its temporary exhibits.

That's really pretty awful.

(If you don't know it, the V&A is a treasure.  Buy a plane ticket and an entry ticket and go visit it immediately.  I'll wait.)

...You back?

Sketching in a museum is how an artist studies.  Learns stuff.  Not allowing sketching in an art museum is like not allowing reading in a library.  Anyway, the irate article is in The Guardian HERE:  in a post titled "'No Sketching': V&A signs betray everything the museum stands for."

Now, it's not like you should go running around and recklessly sketch just any old how: one of our local museums here in Dallas - Fort Worth does restrict sketching to pencil only (afraid that the temptation to draw an ink moustache on a portrait might be irresistible), but after asking you to put that pen away, they'll happily provide the pencil.  Because they know that being able to sketch is important.

Sketching is so important that the V&A even has a webpage extolling the importance of sketchbooks HERE.  (They should read it.)

Why is drawing so important?  On the V&A's page architect Eva Jiricna explains it perfectly:

"If I draw it for myself, I understand it. If I try to imagine it, it is too whimsical. Sketching is a tool - an extension of one's brain."

A page from the 13th C sketchbook of architect Villard de Honnecourt

Seeing, drawing, trying to understand & thinking - copyright long expired

So why the V&A's no-drawing ban?

Keepin' the line movin'.  Move along, move along...  I mean, are museums about art and education or are they about selling some tickets here!

Such a pity that drawing - and thinking - takes so damn long isn't it?

Paper Rules!

An encouraging finding: among 4,000 designers surveyed world-wide, most of them - 64% - still use plain ol' paper and pen or pencil to brainstorm.

Doesn't surprise me at all.

One designer remarked on the particular usefulness of this old-tech method in a meeting.  

Exactly!  Nothing is as fast, as flexible, as readily available as scribbling on paper.  You can respond immediately to the flow of thought in a meeting - or while solo brainstorming.  There is less temptation to perfect the drawing (and computers do prefer perfect); instead the impulse on an impromptu scrap of paper is to rough out something messy but expressive. 

The this-ain't-nothin' worthlessness of a quick sketch on a cocktail napkin is part of its value - it stops the rough idea from becoming too precious to change or discard.

Sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries - do not use commercially please.

The ability to create fast hand sketches is so useful that I once

got flown to Tennessee just to show design grad students how.

Now, the old style of formal hand-drawn drafting or presentation drawings... those easily(ish) translate into computer hardware and software use.

More on the survey HERE at Wired.com.

First Steps...

But if I'm going to show the development of Fun House's Romeo and Juliet set I really need to show the rough sketches that come before the "pretty" drawing (that drawing a designer uses to persuade the director and producers that This Is The Set They Want!).  HERE is that "pretty" sketch.

Here are some of those rough sketches.

These particular doodles were done in the near dark of another theater - Stage West - during an interval in the Tech rehearsal for The Explorers Club.  (Now onstage in Addison at WaterTower Theater - get yer tickets!)

Designers often do overlap shows - have to really - there being not enough weekends in the year or dollars in the fees not to.  Besides, by the time Tech arrives the set designer's job ought to be largely done - now you're mostly checking for goofs, omissions, and minor issues like light leaks or ragged hems on sofas - so that, if things are going smoothly, you have some extra headroom to think about the next show.

So this pic?

Documents me thinkin' about the next show.  In these sketches I was trying to work out the texture of the two towers and whether a flare to the base of the Capulet's would look right... and how to support that balcony anyway...?

Preliminary sketches for Fun House Theatre and Film's Romeo and Juliet- 

by Clare Floyd DeVries in the theater of Stage West during Tech for The Explorers Club.

Line Drawing

I love color.  And color is a rather important aspect of a theater set.  So I usually add colored pencil to my ink sketches to indicate material colors and even to suggest lighting effects.  (An example HERE.)

But for my meeting with the director the other day... well, I ran out of time.  The ink was still wet when I laid my sketch on the restaurant table.  (One-on-one theater meetings with directors are often at restaurants: if your sketch isn't wet with ink as you present it, it's often wet with iced tea before you finish.)

My black & white sketch got more response than I expected when I showed it then and, later, to others.

So I guess it'll stay uncolored.

Sometimes I forget how strong pure line drawings can be.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Kitchen Dog Theater, design sketch by Clare Floyd DeVries C

This is ink pen - Staedtler Pigment Liners in 0.3 and 0.1 sizes - on that ol' faithful, yellow trace.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane isn't really a color kinda set anyway.

(An earlier post on yellow tracing paper and drawing is down the page or  HERE.)

The Importance of Drawing

In architecture -  but also to any type of design or designer.

Here's the master Michael Graves writing in the New York Times: "Architecture and the Lost Art of Drawing."  I absolutely agree - drawing and the designer's hand are part of the machinery of thought, vital parts of study, memory, and creation.

I am also strangely encouraged to discover that I share my love of the humble rolls of yellow tracing paper known to architects of my generation as "yellow trace" or, most affectionately, "trash paper."

(Because, while designing, we trash soooo much of it.)

A sketch for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at Uptown Players, copyrighted, of course

As Michael Graves's sketches are copyrighted, here's the most Gravesian of my own, a sketch for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on - of course! - yellow trace.


An earlier post on architectural sketching HERE.

Watercolor Sketching

I found a really good book called Watercolor Sketching, by Paul Laseau.

Aimed at architects and designers (perfect! for theater and scenic designers), this book is spare of text but lavish with step-by-step examples.  Very helpful whatever your level of experience.

The author has also written a book called Freehand Sketching which I'm going to hunt up!

Ongoing Doodles

Sitting in a coffee shop, sipping a latte, doodling on a long-running daydream project...  Isn't a morning off wonderful?  

(Meanwhile a heap of urgent work waits for me on my drafting board.)

I Just Realized...

When Blogger was down, it lost the previous post.  I don't remember what I wrote, but here is the picture - from  the Stage Design by Joseph blog:

Here's That Sketch

The one inspired by Edward Gorey that I mentioned in my last post - on the Stage Design by Joseph blog.

Architectural Sketches

Even before Vitruvius, architects have needed to sketch in order to explain ideas.  Today?  Not so much.

sketch by le Corbusier

It's one of those generational complaints: older architects moan that younger ones can neither hand-letter nor hand-draw...  The computer making both skills less necessary.  Notice I say "Less."  I believe (and many artists would agree) a designer thinks using their trained hand, that when you sketch, you're not just recording information - as a photo does - but analyzing and internalizing your understanding.  It's the same mechanism that makes writing your own notes more memorable than photocopying someone else's, but added to that is the effort to really look.  To see.  The sketch needn't be pretty - that's a bonus.

Perhaps the only advantage of the terrible job situation right now for young architects and interns may be that they have time to look, sketch, photograph, and think.  Many good architects will leave the profession - go where there IS work.  But it wouldn't surprise me if, when building resumes, a new generation rises of very thoughtful, dedicated, and determined architects.  Some of which can sketch.

The art of architecture could use that energy.

sketch by Andrew Lewis

I love the economy of this sketch of the Alamo by Andrew Lewis.  You can see the artist thinking through the proportions, the symmetry, the geometries of the building.

ESP at work - my set design apprentice just called to discuss his sketching.  He's at the stage where he's looking for exemplars and is studying Edward Gorey's technique.  And here's an example:

image by Edward Gorey courtesy of Mental Flea Market