SCENERY PAINTING FOR THE AMATEUR MUSICAL THEATRE and PANTOMIME
Fourth page of painting the "King and I" Backcloth
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Artistic Thoughts
Preparation at Home
Work on the Stage
The Actual Painting Work
THE ACTUAL PAINTING WORK OF THE "KING AND I" BACKCLOTH
This took three days. I started on the Wednesday.

OOPS
A couple of days before I started painting I was asked if I could extend either side of the picture by four feet. I had already planned a powder-blue wall to go behind the dragons, so I extended that either side by painting on the actual stage back wall and "furnished" it with trees and flowers and shadows, to marry my wall painting with the canvas. (There's to many "walls" in that sentence but I hope you get what I mean) The total painting is now 27 feet wide.

 

THE CHALK GRID Disappeared having been washed out by the paint.

 

FIRST ACTUAL PAINTING TASK
Was to paint in the sky and background mountains and trees. All this was done at breakneck speed (Well as fast as I could go) as I wanted to have the paint wet whilst I blended the colours together on the canvas. Watercolourists call this "Wet in wet" The distant mountains and trees have to be very subtle and out of focus. Brought about in real life by the dust particles in the air. Now you'll see the value of the masking tape as I was able to slosh about without worrying that I would lose my outlines.

 

AS THE WORK PROGRESSES
On Wednesday I painted in the main elements in a base colour (called "Blocking-in"). Really, for me, this is a psychological trick to get colour all over the thing. That huge white canvas is very daunting until I have it covered with colour. The colour I put on was an approximation of what I hope the final colours will be, but from now on I will be "bringing on" or "knocking back" (fading out) each element more or less at the same time. This means I can judge colour, strengths, contrasts, etc. as I progress. I aim for contrast of colours (Dark against Light). And silhouette (such as the foliage along the top and the palm leaves on the right). This is the fun stage as I am almost literally "walking about" in one of my paintings. This too is the time when I know why I have this absorbing hobby.

It is after the blocking-in stage that I removed the outline masking tape. Then on the Thursday I set-to and repainted practically everything again!!

 

TRICKS
I employ lots of self taught tricks whilst painting stage scenery - . Too numerous to mention here, Here are a couple:-

To differentiate between elements I "mist" (I scrub with a very dry brush with a little thick white on) the back piece where it overlaps the foreground item. This makes the foreground one stand out.

I considered adding in a lane going up the blank area in the centre of this cloth. So "practiced" the layout of this lane using masking tape.

 

FIRE-BELL
Right in the centre of the cloth, at the top, is the college's fire bell!! There is no way of moving it. So I have disguised it amongst the foliage of the tree. Appropriately there is now a red flower painted on the fire bell.

 

PAINT
All the paint I use for backcloths is ordinary household Vinyl Matt Emulsion (I think known as latex in USA) However in this particular case I also used some theatrical gold paint for the ornamental embellishments on the dragons. I always mix the colours, I never paint straight from the tin.

Mixing is done in a very casual way so that I get streaks and textures which livens up the surface. I will regularly have two different colours on the same brush, especially when painting foliage. Oh yes and I rarely, if ever, use black (even mixed in with other colours) On this cloth I used about a couple of tablespoon's full.

At the end of the painting there were some sections of the canvas with a covering of up to eight layers of paint.

 

SPIRIT LEVEL Used often with architecture. There's nothing more irritating than to be presented with a slightly askew set of pillars.

 

FIREPROOFING
Then when the picture was completed I sprayed the whole canvas with a fire retarding solution.

 

 

Regards, Brian Willis (Date 11/9/02)

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