What I did today

I'm in an I.A.T.S.E. U.S.A. Union.  That is a Union for artists like myself that choose to work in the Production Design and Art Direction departments in the Entertainment Industry.  Theater, TV, Film, Print, Web... etc.  I have been a member of the Scenic Union, or U.S.A. 829 for a little over 2 years now.  I have paid dues, made contacts, had a fancy login name for the website.  I am technically an "Industrial" scenic.  I have not worked in 2 years.  

So what I need to do is build a strong portfolio that I can find out where the Scene Shops/Paint Shops are and pedal my samples.  The irony of this is, I didn't want to be an Illustrator, even though that's what I started at Art School wanting to do,  for this exact reason.  I didn't think my strongest attribute was going door to door looking for work.  I guess, as a shy Artist... I'll be broke forever.  The upside is, I LIKE to DO the work... so I'm experimenting.

I did some Non-Union Scenic work on a show at a Theater called the "Huntington Theater Company" in Boston.  Which technically is work I got through the Union, if you count it as, we had a workshop in the fall at the shop, and I gave the Charge Scenic of the shop my business card.  The theater is affiliated with Boston University.  The show I was called in as an over-hire on was "Romeo and Juliet, the Opera."  It was a Senior Thesis show, for graduating Opera Majors at BU, so it's not on the roster for thewebsite... of course.  I don't have pictures either, of course.

I may not have the exact title right for the show, but you get the idea.  The set was a massive deteriorating French building.    I did anything and everything they asked me as best as I could and after about 9 non-consecutive days I was finally starting to keep up with these girls who do this work everyday at the same paint shop for something like 5 years.  I loved it.  I was so burnt out, I forgot how PHYSICAL that kind of work can be, but I loved it loved it.

Brick

futz

The panel that is the brick (photo above) is somewhat what we were doing but on a smaller scale.  It's just the texture bit today.  The second one is just me futzing around with plaster and some additives.  I also went in and sponged out some texture, lifting off the plaster mix.  Pretty nifty eh?  I'm sure both will be fun to paint.  We'll see if I can re-create somewhat of a resemblance of what I did on the opera set.  I'm just kinda trying to blog about it to see if I can keep a pretty good step record of how I'm doing things.  :)