I’ve had a busy couple of months recently, splitting my time between my regular art practice, introducing two kittens to our household, and volunteering as an assistant set decorator and painter for our local community theatre.
In December we worked on Robin Hood and the Skytrain of Doom, a big, over-the-top, brilliantly colourful panto that featured Beatles’ music and set decoration reminiscent of Yellow Submarine. For that production I was able to help out on set construction and set painting, and then I got a different perspective working backstage helping to manage props during the play’s run.
We had a very short, two-day break after the panto set was struck and cleaned up before we got back together for our first production meeting for A Comedy of Tenors. This time I’ve been working assisting the set decorator and working directly with the set designer for the show, and I also had the opportunity to paint a mural for the balcony on our set. Tenors had its first performance last night, and I thought I’d offer a behind-the-scenes peek at how the set came together.
Our multi-talented set designer Robin Maggs also built the set, along with a great team of five hardworking gentlemen. Here’s Robin and our fabulous stage manager Bridget Browning on set working out a few logistics. Through the open balcony doors is the wall where my mural will be painted:



To begin the mural I primed the 11-foot wall, then projected an image of the Eiffel Tower onto it and sketched in the image. In this case, the tower’s design is intentionally stylized, as per the director. Apologies for the blurred photos. We were working under some less-than-stellar work lights:



My husband Demetrios helped me carefully tape the edges of the tower sketch so that I could preserve my crisp lines. Since the mural was meant to have a brushy style to it, I started by rolling on some intense colour as an underpainting:



After rolling on colour I worked in some subtler mid and light blues and yellows for the sky. The challenge for me here was to paint the mural in a way that could depict both the afternoon light in act one as well as the early evening light in act two, depending on how the set was lit. Keep in mind that at this point there was no lighting design for me to reference. I was going on a couple of early discussions with the lighting designer where he sketched out his plans. Good thing I have a great imagination!



Here is the tower mural, complete with some subtle foreground detail. A balcony railing was installed shortly after I finished, so the bare part of the wall at the bottom was covered. Upon reflection we decided that I should paint in a section of faux stonework on the right side where the two wall panels create the shadowy corner.



Here’s the set midway through the painting and decorating process. Much of furniture was built from scratch to match the Art Deco style we needed:



In my next post I’ll show you how we created the finishing details for the set, including a beautiful Art Deco floor design.

I’ve been working away at this painting in fits and starts over the past week, but it’s been a busy time for volunteering at the theatre doing set decoration. (More on that soon!)
I’ve been laying in base colours, taping edges of shapes where necessary to achieve nice, clean lines. Once I get the basic shapes painted I’ll move on to creating more texture for visual interest.