SCENERY PAINTING FOR THE AMATEUR MUSICAL THEATRE and PANTOMIME
Second page of painting the backcloth
Artistic Thoughts
Preparation at Home
Work on the stage
The Actual Painting Work
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PREPARATION AT HOME FOR THE "KING AND I" BACKCLOTH
 
I researched Thailand architecture, temples and foliage through guide books, travel brochures, Internet, videos of "King and I", and photos from friends who have visited that country. Chatted with the producers and read the script
 
From rough pencil sketches emerged a final draft which I drew on a sheet of paper to the scale of 1cm to the foot. Yes an apparent silly mixture of old and new measurements but it works. This pencil sketch is my "treatment" and I refer to it when working on the details. I put it into a clear pocket to preserve it.
MY PENCIL TREATMENT SKETCH FOR THIS CLOTH
The original of this drawing is 20cm x 11cm but will not be to that scale on your browser. There is more contrast in the original too, but this has been lost in getting it on the web.

Notice in this sketch :-
  • The Horizon Line (Eye Line) which I have decided is 9 inches above the stage floor.
  • The cartoon sun in top right, to remind me of direction.
  • Centre line
  • Perspective lines on "walls" right and left to help the illusion of perspective
  • Cartoon figure to scale to give me an idea of how actors will look against the backcloth.
  • The bottom two feet of the cloth is covered by rostra running the full length of it so I did not paint that.
 
Squaring this drawing

I photocopied this pencil sketch and on the copy, thickened the main outlines with ink. I then filled in each outlined area with one of four colours, a different colour to each area. THE COLOURS ARE NOT SIGNIFICANT Any four contrasting colours will do. They are there to help when marking the big canvas. (Did you know you only need four colours to mark, say, a map of separate countries and none of the same colours need touch?) On this strange coloured copy I drew a grid of lines one centimetre apart, and numbered them along the edges of the sketch both vertically and horizontally. This gave me my squares. CLICK to see this grid drawing
 
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