Paint... Glorious Paint!

Before we could even start painting on the designs and the actual colors that the flats would be during the show we had to put down a base coat of white. We used Rosco white to start off but when we ran out we moved onto basic Matt emulsion. We needed to put down a base coat of white because the canvas absorbs the paint so this puts a layer onto which we paint our designs.
This process of putting a base coat of white on each flat that we were going to use took forever, ages and after (or throughout) we were all hurting and tired from constant rollering of brushes. Luckily there were certain flats that we didn't need to paint so we left them and put them to one side and just concentrated on getting the white on so we could move onto the actual painting.

In terms of Health and Safety when we started to paint everything, we made sure that we vented to room by opening most of the windows to give a good circulation of air within the painting environment  We also made sure that we took regular breaks and avoided breathing in to much of the paint fumes because this could effect our breathing.

When it came down to picking what to paint onto what flat, it fell down to me as the set designer to decide what to paint and how to paint it. I had a vague idea of what I wanted from the minute I started designing my set but I did rethink certain parts after looking/listening to what my other classmates were going to do, doing this helped because it led to greater outcomes.

This was an image that I just found
that looked near perfect to the effect
I wanted to get.

There were 3 Sections to the set that needed to be painted:

1: The Dumpster: From the start I knew this would be bricks, just bricks like the outside of a building. The bricks would obviously be faded and one would be different to another and these would cover the the window flat and also the 0.25m wide flat. Because it needed to be as realistic as possible I went and measured a brick and made some templates of a brick. Me and Danielle then drew the outlines of hundreds of bricks onto these flats ready for them to be painted.

2: The Wedding Venue (a Touch of Class Banqueting Hall): This was really a late decision on what color to paint these 3 flats, the Doorway and the 2 x the 1m flats. I knew that I wanted it to look like the inside of wedding venue and back then it was very one color, and very light and pale... so we went for a light blue. Dan (HND) then volunteered to paint all 3 flats in the same color. He did this because it meant the whole thing would have the same brush stoke/painting pattern across it so there wouldn't be any patches that looked out of place.

3: Robbie's Basement Bedroom (Basement being Key): Originally on my model box I had painted these flats a light cream/peachy color. Originally I was happy with this choice but when it got round to have to decide on what we were going to paint onto the flats I thought of a different design idea of breeze blocks, these would then show the representation of the scene being in a basement environment and it also the plan was to then decorate the flats with posters/t-shirts and other items. I decide to again create a template of a breeze block to use to draw on the design/pattern which would then be painted later.

For all these designs, I had to draw up on all the designs (with Danielle's help on the brick sections). This took some considerable time but it gave us a clearer understanding of what paint onto the flats.

After all the decisions had been made, we proceeded to move on a implement our designs. What actually happened what that after Ii had marked out one of the 1.75m x 3m Flats, (which also happened to be the window flat), with the brick pattern that I wanted in which I had included a wooden mantel, I mixed up/helped mix up the paint (Rosco) that would be used to paint the bricks. We went for a reddish brick color but it did have a touch of peach/cream to it, we then added a darker red color on top of this to create the desired effect. After the paint had been mixed Hannah, Amy and Mark made a start on the painting of the brick design which had been drawn out. This was a time consuming process but this was down to the fact that they had to be visually effective and also add to the whole image of the Dumpster section to the set.
After the main bricks has been painted we mixed up a light pale/cream color that would be used to represent motor/cement used to form the walls, we then we around each brick and filled in the blank sections that we included into the design. This was a much quicker process but it finished off the whole design and added that finishing touch needed.

As you can see in the image (Above) the brick effect worked excellently when viewing it from a distance, (This image is from a later stage, that I added onto here because I didn't have any other images). Hannah, Amy and Mark did an excellent job at bringing my vision to life and once again if we hadn't all contributed ideas, skills and teamwork into the mix the final outcome wouldn't of been as good.

I then started to make some progress by starting to paint the breeze blocks, I just repeated the whole preparation process by mixing up some grey paint to use, I made sure it was like a distorted dark grey. I managed to create a color that I was happy with and went about painting the breeze blocks on which I had marked out onto a 1.75m x 3m flat and a 1.25x 3m flat.
(This picture is also taken from later on during production week, but I added it to show how we had design and painted it.)
I used a much larger brush compared to the others who were painting smaller bricks, this did mean that I was done alot faster but still managing to get the effect that I set out to achieve.
Again we used the other paint that we made up to finish off the bricks we then used this to finish off the breeze blocks and this worked nicely.

After these 2 Sections had been done we moved onto the flats that will represent the 'Touch of Class Wedding and Catering Venue' and these were the easiest of them all, because they were just going blue all over, as a group we did discuss if we should paint on a pattern across the top of the flats to break up just the huge expanse of color and then also add a block along the bottom and around the door as well. We decided against this due to a couple of factors, we had a lot to get done ready for the show and this wasn't going to be a quick job and we didn't know if it would turn out good for sure so didn't want to risk having to paint over it and start again.

In conclusion as a group we all worked together to complete, design, mixing of paint, drawing of the brick and most of all the painting of the designs. We all took different roles and used our strengths to help get everything done. The whole process of getting these all done did take a couple of weeks but by the end of it they were all looking ready to be assembled and used for the final set, but most of all we were all happy/proud of what we had achieved and it was looking good. The next couple of lesson/the last couple leading up to production week are going to be now focused on completing everything ready for it to be taken over to the theatre.