Faux Dirt

This past week has been one big distressing party! My show Someone Who'll Watch Over Me goes up next week so I'm busy layering dirt, sweat and grime into the costume pieces. The best part about using sprays is the garments can be washed every night without loosing any of the dirt, which makes my life a lot easier.

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

Since the beginning of the year I've been busy working on the show Someone Who'll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness. Set in a dark windowless basement Lebanon, an American, an Irishman and an Englishman are held hostage by unseen terrorists. I'm having a blast designing their disgusting, sweaty clothes that they have had to live in for months without ever taking them off. It's going to be a great show!

The Murderous Ink Blot

There's nothing I love more than a murder mystery, particularly if it is set in a British country manor in the 1940 during a raging thunderstorm. I think I'm drawn to stodginess, elaborate hairdos. And a little Edward Gorey reference never hurts. I don't think I'm quite suited to live in California with constantly beautiful weather. Sometimes a girl just wants a thunderstorm.

This is an illustration I did for my figure drawing class using ink quills and washes. Fun Fact: Midway through my quill splattered smack in the middle of my project so I had to just roll with it and incorporate it in the drawing. I think it actually worked to my advantage! Death by ink blot?

A couple of images that helped me set the mood:

Befores and Afters

Unlike my evil nemesis Watercolor, Photoshop and I get along just fine. ;)

Typically I will sketch my characters out on paper and then scan them and finish them up digitally. These are my most recent completed renderings so you can see what I work with when Photoshopping. If you have a drawing tablet you can draw your body and outlines pretty easily, but I prefer sketching them out by hand and then layering that scanned outline over what I've photoshopped to keep it from looking too clean and perfect.

Le Marionette

Behold! Another set of rendings for Tartuffe. For my third and (hopefully) last Tartuffe of my academic career, I chose to turn the characters into dark marionettes with Tartuffe pulling their strings as the twisted puppet master. Each character is loosely based on different decades from the 1800s through the 1940s.

I think it's pretty clear that I'm a huuuuge Colleen Atwood fan, the costume designer who works with Tim Burton. If I could ever work/intern for her I would be in heaven! I would happily sort her bric-a-brac and get her coffees for free any day.

 

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completely gratuitous Bergdorf shots

God, I love all the beautiful christmas window displays on 5th Avenue. These astrological/adventurer/steampunk-esque displays from Bergdorf Goodman are absolutely incredible.  

A Bavarian Christmas

I had a pretty amazing Christmas. My parents moved back to Garmisch-Partenkirchen deep in Bavaria and I was lucky enough to go and spend xmas with them. We used to live in in Garmisch when I was in high school and it was a bit like old times. Went to the Christmas Markt, forced down some Glühwein (the most awful drink known to man), trudged around the snow, went snowboarding ate some schnitzels and got some much needed downtime while hanging out with my parents. 

One Tarty Period

The title is much saucier than the content I'm afraid. Here are a few of my painted renderings for a 1670s version of Tartuffe.

Watercoloring and I are not exactly on speaking terms. Heck, make that painting in general. We do the polite get together every now and then, but it's just not the same as with photoshop. ;) It's just that photoshop and I get along so well, it makes dabbling with other mediums so awkward.

My main issue with watercolor is keeping the white under the color and leaving blank spaces. I have such a photoshop mindset where I NEED to fill everything in completely fill and then add highlight and shadow later. Watercolor also looks better when things aren't perfect and I cannot for the life of get all "loose and free."

That said, I'm quite proud of these! Granted I'm only posting half of them (because there is no way the other's will see the light of day) but these 4 turned out quite nicely if I do say so myself.