The last 6 days (33 hours) have been spent focusing my studio work on the production La Ronde. My aim for the week was to design in principle all the characters ready for the next designer/ director meeting on the 18th May. My personal deadline was planned the 11th May as I would need to spend the rest of the time before the next meeting working on Mary Barton as I would also meet the director for that production on the same day. With a tight schedule I planned to spend 2 days drawing the basic outlines for each character and then designing the costumes over the next 4 days. For this production I am looking at creating a caricature style therefore the emphasis on faces and poses is essential to communicate character. Also an important observation which I have realised working with 3 different directors is that they all visually need different things to help them understand the concepts offered to them by me. The director for La Ronde is particular about detail and her key focus is on getting the correct period look. She has a keen interest in costume and wants to know all aspects of the costume including the underwear. As the focus of the play is about sex and most scenes consist of the characters undressing or at least exposing their underwear I completely understand her concerns and focus. Therefore when working I took into consideration her needs and designed in the style accordingly creating a style which I will know call detail/ caricature. I chose therefore to make the line drawings and final designs clear and very detailed but still retain a characterful drawings style. Using the research on Austrian/ Hungarian Artists I can observe styles of artists such a Mucha and see a relation in the style I want to create for my research and an appropriate style for the influences of the production. His theatrical images and character based art is detailed, refines and bold.
The technique I used for creating the illustrations was not new to me as I had used the technique when designing a dance production in 2006. The processes involved a series of hand-drawn line drawing of the body, face and sometimes the hands, which are drawn on separate sheets. I choose to hand-draw in this way as my drawing ability can sometimes be hindered by drawing in restricted sizes. For example I draw better proportioned and detailed faces at a much more affiant pace if I can draw them large. The proportion of the bodies are drawn on A4 sheets and sometimes when I am struggling with a particular aspect of a pose (e.g the angle of an arm, foot) I take the option of tracing from an existing image. Once I have completed the drawings I scan them into the computer for rescaling and positioning together, finally creating a whole body. Though at this point my focus is not on the costumes, this process is not alien to the actual ‘design’ process as while forming these line drawings I am constantly considering character, looking at reference images and forming an idea of what the final costume may look like.
The next step of the process is to print out the line drawings several times and start to design the clothes which will be worn. The advantage of this is that multiple options can be tried without starting again each time. From time to time when the pose is not appropriate to communicate the garment, I will draw for example a differently posed arm or leg. Once the drawings are formed
The technique I used for creating the illustrations was not new to me as I had used the technique when designing a dance production in 2006. The processes involved a series of hand-drawn line drawing of the body, face and sometimes the hands, which are drawn on separate sheets. I choose to hand-draw in this way as my drawing ability can sometimes be hindered by drawing in restricted sizes. For example I draw better proportioned and detailed faces at a much more affiant pace if I can draw them large. The proportion of the bodies are drawn on A4 sheets and sometimes when I am struggling with a particular aspect of a pose (e.g the angle of an arm, foot) I take the option of tracing from an existing image. Once I have completed the drawings I scan them into the computer for rescaling and positioning together, finally creating a whole body. Though at this point my focus is not on the costumes, this process is not alien to the actual ‘design’ process as while forming these line drawings I am constantly considering character, looking at reference images and forming an idea of what the final costume may look like.
The next step of the process is to print out the line drawings several times and start to design the clothes which will be worn. The advantage of this is that multiple options can be tried without starting again each time. From time to time when the pose is not appropriate to communicate the garment, I will draw for example a differently posed arm or leg. Once the drawings are formed
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