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.

Funny Projects

Today's funny project is to go to Kitchen Dog and paint a couple of those big billboard-like pictures with the faces cut out so that folks can get silly pictures taken... fun!

(Mind you, human figures are not my thing, so these photos may come out even sillier than they should.)

Here's one of my inspirational photos...  These are public domain photos - amalgamated and generally messed with and neither tidy nor "finished" since this is just a go-by.  My version will be cartoon-y.

The party of the year is Saturday!  Hooch & Pooch at Kitchen Dog Theater!

Book Sale

A new sale from Lulu.com on Alice Through the Proscenium (and a few other books).  More on Alice HERE:

Film Fest - This Means War

This Means War is a light-weight but mildly amusing combo of buddy movie and rom-com. This spies-who-fall-for-the-same-girl flick works only on the strength of the three stars' charm: Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, and Tom Hardy.  I did enjoy it...

But why can no one make a pure romantic comedy right now?

This Means War film

Is love not love without a car chase?  Or a Crude Best Friend?  (This time the girl's best friend and well done, if it had to be.)  But as soon as I left the theater I started mentally refilming this story as it might have been in the '40s or '50s with Cary Grant or Rock Hudson as the American spy, maybe David Niven as the Brit... Grace Kelly?  Audrey Hepburn?  The plot of many earlier films were at least as silly, but then the story played out with that era's wit, style, elegance! Spies require derring do, yes, (the paintball fight was fun), but how about an adult story with less of that checklist of 14 year old boy gotta-haves?

If Doctor Zhivago were made today, it'd look like Mission Impossible!

Film Fest - Loy and Powell

On a bit of a Myrna Loy/William Powell kick around here!  Just watched I Love You Again - amnesia has never been so much fun.  I loved Powell's character's reaction to waking to find a stuffed squirrel staring at him from his bedside.

William, Myrna, and a Squirrel - not from the film, but funny.  More at Film Noire Photos

I'd recommend starting out with that classic The Thin Man, then if you enjoy their chemistry, explore that film's several sequels and then others like Double Wedding.  (Earlier POST.)

HERE's a good review for The Thin Man.

Further Adventures of a Plan

After meeting with the director of Boeing, Boeing (earlier POST), the plan for the set as it will appear in its new theater venue will be slightly revised: two doors will be switched, the bathroom and a bedroom changing places (which means I need to erase "To Bedroom # 2" and write "To Bathroom" basically) and the wall that holds that bedroom door needs to slide onstage a foot or two in order to ease a slight sight-line issue from a few seats.  (There's always a sight-line issue!)

Oh, and the fake Warhol painting morphs into a fake Mondrian.

A Warhol soup can and a Mondrian - both, I believe public domain

Today's task is to revise this sketch and get copies to the theater so the Artistic Director and Technical director can look 'em over.

Fantastic Theater Set!

Surfing around I just splashed across this spendorific trailer-trashy theater set.  Wish I knew who designed it.

More photos at Sonyradio.com

Apparently this photo has been floating around the internet under the alias of "The Redneck Mansion."  It's actually a set for a production of Ivanov at Amsterdam's Openluchttheater.  Wonderful!

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.)