Cloth no3 'The Tree' cloth

The reference

This is my favourite of all the cloths - it's beautiful!

bit of color-mixing going on there!

This cloth was stretched, marked up and some stages paint applied, whilst I was working on the wave cloth.
 I came onto the bridge for the first time to use a pounce to mark up the tree pattern.

Maisie using a scale of 1:25

Earlier on at the start of Panto, Luisa had cleverly set Maisie the task of scaling up a the linocut leaves print onto tracing paper to make a large pounce for the trees. As you can see in the reference, there is a repeated pattern on all the trees. The best way to repeat it accurately is to use a stencil - or pounce.

'why's it so big!'

Luisa wanted to see how successful it would be, so she experimentally tried it out on a section. You can see the drawn pounce lying over the bridge to the right.

painted - ready for the pounce

pounced!

This is the first time I'd used a pounce of this scale. We needed 3 people due to the size of it and we were chomping through charcoal.
I think we all looked like chimney sweeps after that - I seem to remember a lot of people looking at my face and laughing :)
The pattern require a quick touch up on the faint lines when the pounce was removed. It was now ready to paint!
Always the best bit. :)
Just about to put 1"brush to canvas and I hear Gary informing us all to use bigger brushes!
I got a new 3" into my hand and it felt so awkward trying to keep in the lines.

It was quite funny, everyone just moaned for the whole bottom set of trees about how our brushes were to big and low and behold! by the time we'd reached the top, we were masters of our strokes.

I remember saying to Karen, 'I'm lovin it'. She was like 'me too!' hehe

< practice! practice! practice! >

it's a recurring theme :D

After the pattern was complete, we painted in the rest of the white cloth, which made everything look clean. Touched up any drips or marks and applied our rolly textury printy mark!

I went a bit thick on the paint and the printy pattern was too stark! I needed to tone it down. I repainted some of the green with a texture roller and watered the white. 

When I added water it dripped. I had a dilema! It was suggested to me that maybe if I mixed the green with some white instead of watering it, I could produce the same effect.

and it worked!

Next step was to get the black in. It was amazing when we did - it just made the whole cloth stand out. We were beginning to see a collage effect!!

It might be impportant to make note of the team at this time.
We each had worked on a number of things at this point and gotten over various fears and issues we had about working around each other.
We all seemed to have acquired a work ethic and understanding of how each other worked - and it was obvious and a very nice place to be learning and discovering.
I felt around the time of the tree cloth was when we all came together. The second years even started to step up their game.
The truth is, we all loved this design and loved working on it.
And it showed.
Cue Tom Petty's 'Free Falling' - seems an appropriate theme song for the moment.
Talking of appropriate theme song, since you have to give audible warning when moving the bridge - we decided Aerosmiths 'Love in an Elevator'  would be the bridges theme tune -
cause we like living it up when we're going up & down :D

So, back to the trees,
we dry brushed a little shading into the trunks and guess what we did next...?
yes - applied the textury printy roller thang! and spatter!!

the reference!

It looks

just like

When I looked through the reducing glass when we'd deemed this 'finished'
I almost cried.
It looks amazing and was made with love by all the paintshop team at the RSAMD 2010!!

-- a little bit of everyone went into that --

The journey continues with the 'Puppet Theatre'