15 South African Scenic Artists Experience Rosco Supersats

Scene Painting Workshop Held at Wits Theatre

The task:

This images shows the step by step process of painting stage draperies.

The results:

Everyone's painting was fantastic.

It was important for everyone in the workshop to experience paints from the international leader in scenic paint for the entertainment industry. They deserved to experience the best. I worked with Oliver Hauser from Congo Blue of Johannesburg, Ron Knell of Rosco UK, Jenny Knott of Rosco USA and the Nic Mayer from the Wits Theatre and Jenni-Lee Crewe from the Wits Drama Department to produce a professional Scene Painting workshop featuring Rosco Off Broadway and Rosco Supersaturated paints.

The Fulbright experience works both directions; 15 South African scenic artists got to experience the pleasure of Rosco brand paints. I got to share with them my knowledge of using these special paints. I use Rosco products in my work at Oklahoma State University as well as in my professional work.

The first step is the shadows. Here I have shown the use of Payne's Grey and Van Dyke Brown as effective shadow colours.

Barati experiences the success of darker shadows.

Rosco Supersats are meant to be greatly diluted. This was the main learning curve for everyone involved. (That, and learning to paint with your brush tied to the end of an extension stick!)

Courtney is ready to apply colour.

 Rosco paints are water-based acrylic paints. The participants were amazed that the paints diluted so nicely (great color even at 10 water to 1 paint). They were pleased that this represents a significant savings, too.

Adriano kneels to get a bit of fine detail accomplished.

The participants first laid in water creating the shape of their shadow area. They made sure the water’s edge was sharp where the shadow needed to be sharp, and abundant where the shadow needed to be soft. Then they brushed in washes of shadow using Payne’s Grey Rosco Off Broadway paint.



Abie begins to add the blue colour

We ate lunch whie the shadow layer dried, and when we returned, we layered on the diluted blue or red and proceded with the paper pounce of the rope and tassels next. The bottom fringe was an exercise in dots for highlights.

Wilhelm adds detail to the bottom fringe.



From front to back, Jenni-Lee, Wilhelm and Klara deepen their red drapery.



Roger pauses to let his red drapery dry.



Oliver of Congo Blue provided Roger's Door prize win - a case of Rosco Vivid FX Ultraviolet reactive paint.

  

The Cairo Job

Taking the Fulbright to Egypt for 10 days

Chekov’s Three Sisters: Recreating Russian Birch Trees in the Desert

As a Fulbrighter, I realized that persons from Oklahoma State University, The University of the Witwatersrand, and the American University in Cairo were joining together in producing this piece of theatre.

  The Three Sisters Play poster shows how important birch trees are to the environment of the play   

I was able to extend the reach of my Fulbright experience into Egypt when I invited Nic Mayer, the Technical Director from Wits Theatre to participate in the production process of the American University in Cairo’s production of Chekov’s Three Sisters designed by Bill Forrester. This would allow a South African theatre professional to experience a somewhat American theatre organization in a totally different country. AUC, while it has an American TD and several other Americans on their faculty, is distinctly non-American in the scene shop and costume shop and lighting area. The product is still the same, though, same as it is here at Wits: a show. Nic will take the knowledge and experience he has gained back to his students at Wits and disseminate it for years to come.

Dave Wlodarski, AUC’s Technical Director, forwarded me by email all of Bill’s paint elevations and Photoshop models of each act, including some of the early versions so I could understand the design team’s concept. Several days before our departure we began making tests with materials and experimenting with painting techniques for the birch trees and the wooden floors. The wallpapered walls, with spatter and ageing would happen once we landed in Cairo.

I photographed the results of our tests and sent them the design team by email. I also Skyped the American designer Bill Forrester and the AUC Technical Director Dave Wlodarski in order to discuss the techniques and establish a timeline consensus. My position was that of Charge Artist for the production.




http://mysteve.com/images/2005/05/Birch%20Trees%2020050524%20009.jpg 

Bill Forrester sent several images of birch tree forests so we could see how skinny and pole-like the trees were. We noticed, too, the bushy undergrowth which would also need to be reproduced.

 

This is a Photoshopped model Bill Forrester did of his ideas for Act 4 of the Three Sisters.


The environment for Three Sisters is usually surrounded by a birch tree forest. The designer sent several images of a birch tree forest such as the one above. We needed to examine what actually made the dark marks on the white bark, and how the peeling bark cast shadows. The set designer and lighting designer (Stancil Campbell) both wanted trees with texture so lighting could change to quality of light in the forest. I found several more images which helped explain how the bark works.



Peelng bark and dark "spatter and drag" on a real tree. Both photos are from this website



Another example of bark curls on a real birch tree.



This picture shows the stronger horizontal patterns created by failed branches. This image is from here. It is picture #52.

One of our experiments was to make samples of the trees before arriving in Cairo. Using a cut-out trunk shape of thin plywood or masonite, we settled on a wrinkled newspaper method after experimenting with several other materials including cheesecloth, burlap or hessian, and lightweight muslin or calico.

 

 

The newspaper sample was the clear winner. The burlap was too soft and fuzzy, the cheesecloth was too limpid and flat, and the calico didn’t create sharp enough bark peelings. Below is our second newspaper birch tree sample, which everyone liked.



This is the second sample we did of the newspaper birch trees. There is black tule in between the trunks which will act as a projection surface for autumn leaves.



These images above show the process of pinching a pleat into the newspaper to become one of the horizontal bark elements then another layer of paint is put on to keep the pleats stiff and to blot out the headlines on the newsprint.

When we arrived we had 56, 7 meter tall birch trees to make. The AUC students helped quite a bit. They learned the process including using paint as the glue for the wrinkled newspaper, applying highlight and shadow, and spatter and drag.

Here’s most of the birch trees laid out in the AUC parking lot, with a few trees in the middle having had their first spatter and drag pass and a few knotholes enhanced. Several AUC students helped texture and paint the trees.

  

For the wooden floors, I determined the viewing distance and the viewing angle to help me decide how bold the floor boards needed to be. During the experiments, we fine-tuned the paint to water ratios, and determined whether the spatter and drag step should be done with a warm or a cold color.

Here’s our samples, which the designer felt could go even darker.

This sample is done on a sheet of already many-times-painted Masonite. It includes several wood-grain styles. My favourite it the top left which shows the saw marks. And my next favourite is the heartwood on the bottom and second one up. We were thinking of pine floors, not having any particular direction in that area.



This curved wagon above is just a small portion of all of the wood-grained rolling units we did. The overall value is darker, and the wood color is slightly warmer. It has a blue spatter on top to aid in the cool-toned scenes.

This image shows one of the settings nearly completed. Although there is rehearsal furniture on it, you can see the darker tones in the wood floor. Notice, too, the ageing applied to the columns and cornice header. The striped wallpaper and stencil work on the upstage wall is all paint.



Below is one of Bill Forrester's paint elevations for the upstage wall. Basically, once we got to Cairo, Bill said make everything darker than the elevations. Pitiful pale prints were what I had to work with until I could get my hands on the originals, and subsequent research information encouraged Bill to take everything darker and richer.

Bill Forrester's paint elevation for the Three Sisters Act 1 upstage wall.

   

Above is the stencil pattern used on the upstage wall. We painted the green stripe first, then laid the stencil down and painted back the wall color. The entire wall was spattered in 3 colors, so the lighting designer could warm or cool the scene at will. One student in particular helped do the stencil on these walls.  The reverse side of the upstage wall gets a dark aged wood clapboarding – all in paint. 

 



This exterior dark wood above is missing its secondary highlight for the curved part of this unusual wooden siding. It almost looks like chinked logs in the research. Bill decided it was a shiplap of some sort. It is also missing its spatter and drag, and its silver blue color wash to tone down the highlights and grey-out whatever warm there is in the base.

 

This detail of the exterior siding has its final paint: spatter and drag, secondary highlight, and blue wash.



One of the pictures from the English Russian Wooden House website we used for reference.



This is a close-up of the cornice and pillars. AUC carpenters are famous for their attention to detail.

 

Above is a section of the wallpaper, largely done by Bill Forrester himself, for the bedrooms. We first painted the background stripes, the striped those with a contrasting softer stripe, then Bill applied the stencils ( a labor of love) and then we streaked a bit of watery Van Dyke Brown age on top. This photo is just before streaking the VDB.



This photo shows the wainscot getting scumbled in and aged.

This image below shows the scene shop complete with dust collectors for each power tool. Very nice.

AUC's Scene Shop. Kamal, Abd'el Nabi and other wonderful technicians work there!

And since there’s no final view of the finished set yet, this image below  should let you know what the stage space is like; the seating is steeply raked, and the apron has a dedicated lighting pipe over it! How lucky.

The Malak Gabr Arts Theatre at the American University in Cairo with some of the Three Sisters scenery on it.

Wits Theatre Facility Tour Part 2

So far, I’ve shown you pictures of main theatre lobby and loading bay. Now, we’re off to the scene shop, costume shop and more! More parts of the tour will follow. If you're interested in a specific area, let me know and I will seek permission to photograph it to show you how things are done here. It is really interesting that the flow of the architecture for the purpose of making theatre is similar to everywhere else I've been. I mean, a light booth is a light booth is a light booth. The basic functions remain the same yet the chain of command can be different.

The workshop is full of natural light, and is quite large. The TD and the ME’s offices are in one corner of the shop, with the PM’s office right above theirs.

The paint area functions as a catch-all for the several shows that are produced by the workshop. Once a show buys paint, it is difficult to keep that paint in stock because every last drop is used on another show and so on with very little waste.

The workshop has your typical arc welder, oxyacetylene rig, and band-saw and other power tools.

Here is the arc welder.

And here is flat storage.

Here is the Greenroom for the Wits Main Theatre.

The dressingrooms are light and airy and have lockers for street-clothes.

Upstairs in the hallway off the costume workshop, there are windows into the scene shop which allow natural light into the hallway, and a great view to the construction areas below.

Here’s another picture of the hallway showing how big the windows are that overlook the workshop.

The costume shop is a bright and cheerful place to work. It is small like many other costume shops I’ve been in, and this one has the added duty of supervising the small properties such as liquor bottles and telephones.

Storage for notions and jewelry-making etc. are near the offices of the Costumer/Shop Manager and her staff.

This is a view of the costume shop looking toward the offices. Notice the Juki!!

The laundry room.

The shoe room.

The small props room.

One row of the costume storage room.

Some of the colorful costumes in storage.

The students, staff and patrons get to grab a drink or a snack from the café  in the lobby, and come outside onto a terrace for some sunshine.

One of the other venues managed by the Wits Theatre complex is The Nunnery, actually part of an old Catholic church.

The Drama Department is in a different building from the Wits Main Theatre. It is across the road in what used to be a dental school. This is the lobby of the Wits School of the Arts in which you'll find the Drama Department. The school houses all of the arts, and actually several buildings are used to contain rehearsal rooms, offices, studios, workshops, practice rooms, sound labs, and so on.