Rosco Spectrum: For Fences at Arizona Theatre Company, Scenic Designer Vicki Smith and Charge Scenic Artist Brigitte Bechtel presented to us an opportunity to help create a set that needed to look grungy, worn and real, with rusting metal, peeling paint on wood, tattered pavers and aged brick.
3 comments:
I like how they went over the specifics of each step including
the specific colors they used. This gave me some ideas for other applications of the techniques they used.
Rustic, dirty, and distressed sets have been my favorite kind to paint since high school. I’ve always thought that it is so interesting how many different ways there are to make a flat and lifeless set piece suddenly have a dynamic history and character to show its position within the world of the play. Also, I think that a lot of the research that goes into scenic painting happens within this world of distressing and aging, since the charge artist and scenic designer need to know where, how, and with what each piece would have been realistically weathered. It’s very cool that this company routed their own bricks; in the past I’ve only ever painted flat bricks on hard cover scenery, until this past summer when I interned in a scene shop which bought their bricks pre-routed. I thought this was a little strange since it gave the whole flat kind of a generic-looking texture, but since it was for TV it made more sense for them to look slightly cleaner and neater. It’s also nice to see that even in our current world overflowing with technology and new and innovative ways to do things, sometimes all you need is brown paint and a damp rag. I’ve never heard before of the technique they described to distress wood planks but I think it turned out beautifully. I think it’s amazing how something so simple can create such a professional looking final product. After spending a summer learning about scenic painting, I’m so excited to learn more.
I think one of the more interesting things about this article is it's demonstration of just how much work goes into making something look old and neglected. I think one of the hardest parts of distressing anything, anywhere from sets to costumes, is the idea that you're trying to recreate something that happened over many years in only a few weeks at most. The most "authentic" way to create a distressed look would be to create an original thing in perfect condition, and then distress from there. But in the theatre world, that would cost and waste so much more than necessary. The other thing I think this article highlights, especially for those outside of the scenic world, is just how much technique and skill is required to create something so simple that we all see in our everyday lives. Something like distressed brick has ten steps, and a specific wood floor may take weeks and layers upon layers of paint to complete. I also think that this article, in an indirect way, demonstrates the value of knowing the process and concepts behind what we do, especially as the theatre industry moves more and more toward technological advancements. Like the wood trick, where all it takes to create an incredible effect is dragging piece of wood along the surface.
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