Castle, part 2

In the end, I am not happy with any of my castles. So I made a new one. I figured I could call it work if I forced myself to figure out a new trick in Illustrator. I did -- I figured out "join" so that I could make half of something, copy, reflect and then get the two parts to meet up to form an enclosed space (enclosedspace being important for adding color).

Step 1: Find a castle picture for reference. Bring into photoshop. Using the brush tool, trace the parts I like, add some other stuff from my head. Intersting part is that I am only making the left side of the castle. Save. Bring into Illustrator. Convert to vector. Resize as needed. Copy and flip so I can see the whole castle. Fairly symmetrical! Now, add another layer and trace this image, this time in Illustator. Practice using the pen tool for this. Copy shapes and squeeze or stretch as needed -- saves lots of time. Make half of a shape, copy, flip, and join. Makes things look more even. Slowly create all the shapes. I am doing all of this with a red line so I can see it over the image I am tracing.



















Step 2: Instead of being empty on the inside, give all the inside a color. I used white to start. Re-order all the parts so that they stack correctly. Change the line color to a black line.

Step 3: Fix a few details, like the missing windows on the right side. Change the line weight so that it is a thicker dark line. Add color. Add another layer for the background -- just a green and blue background.

At this point, it is not done, but this version works as a color/size/detail draft. When actually projected with an overhead up onto a huge canvas dropcloth, I'd use the black and white version. When actually painted the colors here would be the underpainting, and then details -- like the lines between stones would be added.

Set Design

I don't know anything about set design for plays. Nothing. Zip zilch nada. Yet somehow I found myself enthusiastically volunteering to design and paint the castle backdrop for the version of Sleeping Beauty that my son is performing in later this summer. It's all because I had a drawing of a castle I made last year that I liked. So I felt compelled to say "I can do a castle, I have a castle!". Now in the end, another guy kind of elbowed his way into the project, which is fine -- it's too much for me to do myself in the time frame I have, so in the end, he's getting the canvas sheeting and will project and draw the outlines because he has a space large enough to hang the 12'x16' dropcloth and a projector that will do that, and I am sending the design to him, procuring the paint, and then we'll paint it together at the theater in a few weeks.

So I get home from this meeting, crank up my computer, and realize that my castle image is just not right. Too many colors, and it is taller than it is wide. Perhaps also a bit modern. I might point out that we had absolutely no art or stage direction form the director, so this whole set and props meeting was a bunch of people sitting around saying "hmm, I am just not sure what he'd like to see..." Seemed kind of unprofessional for the director to not be at the meeting. But I digress. So my castle sucks, is the bottom line. But I said I had a castle, so I needed to make a castle. So I spent the next two hours working on my castle in a an attempt to come up with some alternatives that might work. I needed something that has clean-ish lines for projecting and drawing, that would only require a few colors of paints and their mixed tints, and that would shout "Sleeping Beauty" to all in the audience.

This is the original castle, tweaked for size and with a background added:

These are some alternatives I played around with:

Any comments before I ship these off to the director to see what he thinks? I find myself leaning towards the silouette version, although the other one has the child-like feel I was also thinking about. I'm, just not sure so I guess I'll send them all along to the director.

Did I mention that Owen has to perform in Sleeping Beauty 6 times over two weeks? And that he is also in High School Musical 2, so he is performing in that 6 times during the same time span. Please, please, please don't let me turn into one of those theater moms.

Grandmamobile

If I had to live in a car, one of these old 1960's era two-couches-on-wheels cars would be the way to go.

Scanner!

I have been grumbling about wanting a scanner for some time, and I finally bought one! It took me just a few minutes to install the drivers, set the thing up, and run a test scan. It took longer for Photoshop to open than it did to set up the scanner.

Unfortunately, the thing has a pretty big footprint, but I figured out that it fits perfectly on the shelf above the computer area. It's not like we'll scan every day or anything, so pulling it down the the desk to do some scans shouldn't be any trouble.

This pleases me. I think I'll be able to post more stuff if I can scan it here rather than having to bring it to work and jockey for access to a scanner.

I pulled something out of a box of older drawings for my test scan.

Help me choose

Help me choose. I need to pick one of these to submit to the Adams County Art Council annual show. My other submission is the bigger painting I posted earlier today. This collection here consists of all small things, but they are not in scale with each other. The cars are both 6"x12". The skinny abstracts are 2 or 3" by 10", and the landscape is actually 3"x5". The works on paper would be framed, probably in a black frame with a wide white mat. the two cars would be framed in a simple black frame. Try to picture them that way. Oh, and first person to respond gets one of these!

Painting

I have been doing some work, although you wouldn't know from my output here. I should do more progress-so-far posts. I prefer here's-a-finished-thing posts, though.

Today I figured out how to stich 4 images into one. I scanned this painting, then used Photoshop's nifty merge tool to put them together. Literally two clicks and I went from 4 different smaller images to one big image that looks like I used a huge scanner to scan. The edges weren't perfect, but that was from the original scans, not the merging process. I cropped slightly to resolve it. The painting is 18" by 18".