The Poster has been Conquered!

Well after two fruitless days of work I was finally able to make some real progress on the Billie Holiday poster yesterday. I learned a lot about Adobe Illustrator in the process and am very pleased with it now that I understand it better.

Illustrator has this incredibly cool function called live trace that will create a vector illustration from any photograph. I was struggling because all the photos that I had to work with were really low resolution and didn't look very good. So I ended up using the live trace to create this more subtle graphic. I then played around with the 3d effect to loft the Text at a matching angle to the edge of the illustration. This was also new territory and so I had to play around with all the settings to understand them better. Then I figured out how to use add decorative rules using the Stroke function which provided a nice subtle edging for the piece. The original background was just a simple black, but my friend wanted a little splash of color so I selected the background and added a gradient fill with the blue and I think it adds some nice dimension. The gradient is banding a little, so I'll have to work to fix that problem today.

However today I am taking a bit of a day of rest because I have been working so hard this whoe week. I plan to do a bit of gardening, taking advantage of the wet ground from the lovely rain we had last night, and then a lot of house cleaning. We finally got the grand piano that had been visiting us moved on to its permanent home and so we are planning parties for the next three saturdays. What fun!

More Roman Breastplate

Here are some other pictures of the in progress breastplate. After I got the main form molded, then I had to figure out how to add ornamentation that would be mirrored across the sides and consistent. I ended up drawing out a design on paper and flipping it in Photoshop. I printed the design out and then formed the clay into tubes and followed withing the lines. After I had the design, it was a pretty simple matter to position it on the body and then use a tool to meld the edges and smooth it out. I'm very pleased with the results and can't wait to cast it tonight.

The second project I am working on is a poster for a Billie Holiday concert. Unfortunately it is not progressing nearly as well as this project. sigh...

Making Roman Armor

Having finished my round of concerts that were eating up so much of my time, I am now getting to enjoy my days again. I have been puttering with many things. I'm continuing to improve my play proposal since it looks as though it will be at least a month before I find out if I get it. 

I am also starting some drawings from a friend of mine who is a science fiction and fantasy author. She wants to get some drawings of the characters from her new book for her website. I don't really know if I am a good enough artist to pull it off, but she has given me till the end of June to try. Here is the first in progress sketch. This is a character names Dorrin Verrakai

I am also starting the great costume push for the Baroque Opera at Amherst Early Music Festival. This year we are doing Dioclesian by Henry Purcell which has about every fantastic Purcell song in it. It is all Roman Costumes this year, which should be a lot of fun.

The first thing I am tasked with making are some Roman breastplates. I am going to try to make them using the same technique I have been using for the Leather Masks, where I cast a negative form and then mold the leather into it. Here are some pictures of the in progress clay sculpture. The first stage was just laying down the shapes and the second was refining them.

Puck Sketch

Here was yesterday's sketch. This one went a lot faster, both in the actual sketching on paper and in the painting in Photoshop. I think I am getting better. I found a ton of painting tutorials on Youtube that I am enjoying watching which will hopefully make the process even easier.

I also have a sketch of Bottom and Titania in process, and then I think I only have to do one of the Rude Mechanicals in the midst of their play and that will probably be enough to convey the feel of the play.

More Midsummer Sketches

I have been happily working away on the laptop with the Wacom tablet having a lot of fun with these production drawings for my play proposal. It really is amazing how I am growing as an artist now that I don't have the pressure of having to make a living at it. Now if I can only achieve some of the amazing facility of some of the computer painters out there that I admire.

So here are some sketches of my Lovers in their undress, and of Oberon's Unseelie court. As a point of interest I have included the original pencil drawing before it gets taken into to Photoshop and painted.

Hip Deep in Midsummer Night's Dream

I have been creating a proposal for our Shakespearean Theatre Group to do A Midsummer Night's Dream next spring. It has been a very educational process, as I am learning a lot about scheduling and planning for that large an endeavor. However the most fun part so far has been starting to do some production drawings of the different characters from the play.

Here are a few. I sketched them out on paper and then scanned them and painted them in photoshop. I put the drawing on a layer and changed the layer mode to Multiply, and then I could create another layer underneath to paint in the color, and montage some textures for fabric.

I have also started working on the costumes for the Amherst Early Music Workshop that I am going to this summer. They are doing Purcell's Diocletian, which has just about every fntastic Purcell song in it. It should be fun because I get to make Roman clothing for it. Here is a draping test that I did for a Tunica. Sorry for the blurry picture, my iphone had stuff on the lense. Anyway it looks like it going to be a very creative summer.

San Diego Pictures

I managed to get a few fun pictures in San Diego. Although I realized that I didn't actually remember to take many pictures of the people. When I am with people I enjoy their company so much that I never remember the camera.

My friends Steve and Angelina are the people I went out to visit, and these are their children Elizabeth and Samuel. They are two incredibly sweet kids and it was really fun to get to play with them for several days. Samuel is two and I believe Elizabeth is 5 now. The second photo is from Steve and Angelina's Facebook Page, and it shows a bit of the wonderful spirit of Samuel and Elizabeth.

Here is a Photo of Steve and Angelina's house out in the Suburbs of San Diego past the Miramar base. It is really a lovely area but you drive through 20 minutes of nothing after you get out of San Diego to get there. I was taking these pictures very early in the morning as the sun rose so they are very misty. All the sun rises while I was there came up through a deep fog that hung on the hill and slowly burned it off.

Here is the sun rising over their street.

The first morning I got a chance to walk around and see their neighborhood. The gardens were amazing and so I got my camera and was able to take some fun pictures. They were a wonderful mix of traditional flowers and tropical plants and every one was obviously well loved. The roses just blew me away. This white rose was considerably taller than I was. It was almost tree sized.

This was my favorite rose that I saw. The picture doesn't convey the depth and complexity of the color. It was a riot of subtle pale reds, red oranges and hits of gold.

These were my other favorites. Their lovely scent just filled the whole yard and they were surrounded by prostrate rosemary in a really nice combination.

I also saw a lot of fun things with flowers in unusual shapes. Plants seemed to grow much larger there than here. I saw geraniums that were waist high. Here are a couple of pictures of plumbago and lantana trimmed into flowering bushes. The orange lantana was just fantastic.

 

In addition to the more traditional flowers there were a lot of succulents. There were entire yards where the grass was succulent pants like iceplants. I didn't know the name of this one but I thought it's tiny purple flowers were just lovely.

On the other end of the sale were some really giant succulent plants that gave a fun sculptural effect in the gardens.

And I wish I know what this plant was. It was a small mounding bush form and had the most wonderful scent like a cross between jasmine and gardenia. You could smell it all the way down the street.

These pictures are from the 2007 workshop, courtesy of Jim and they show a bit of the lovely state park we were in. I was having so much fun I kept forgetting the camera. I went walking around this pond and tried to go the hill the first morning but my shoes were unequal to the terrain so I gave up halfway up.

And this is a picture that I took os the view on the road up the mountain. The view was lovely but the road itself was a twisty carsickness inducing nightmare for me.

And last but not least, here is a sunset from Steve and Angelina's back yard on the last evening. What a stunning view.

 

Hopefully some other people will have more pictures of the workshop in progress and I'll be able to repost those eventually. What an inspiring trip.