In my little corner

The large majority of my time these days is spent in my little corner of the room for the performance costume 4th years and masters students (of which there are two), trying to make up for an unfortunate lack of real productivity earlier this semester.  At the moment I have quite a lot of projects 'in progress', and am slowly chipping away at the list of things to get done.

First priority for the rest of the semester is finishing all the final costume illustrations for The Girl Without Hands.  I've decided to do them on illustration board, and start with a pencil drawing which then gets set with fixative and varnished so that I can paint on top.  I just do a simple wash of acrylic to tone the board, and then use thin layers of oil paint on top.

(this one was sort of at the half-way point here)

I've also started mocking up and making costumes for the main character, and am aiming on having three toiles and at least one finished final costume by the turn in date in May.  In spite of not having masses of time at my disposal, I'm still doing quite a bit of hand stitching on the final pieces... such as the shift currently on the stand.  After all, there's nothing quite like focusing on hand work for some quality stress relief!

in the sketchbook

Since I'm currrently off Learning And Looking At Things in Germany, I figured that it might be a good time to post some of the sketches I did for various 'Girl Without Hands' characters. Most of these are just my initial impressions/ideas and most likely will not really resemble the final designs/illustrations much at all, but at least it shows a bit of what's been tumbling around in my head.  For working out ideas I like to scan pencil drawings into the computer and then mess around with color in photoshop... though I don't think I'll use this sort of technique for the final illustrations.

And tomorrow I get to look at original 19th century pieces of German folk costume... so hopefully I'll soon have a bunch of new research to incorporate!

A lightbulb. It has gone off.

I had a personal revelation of sorts today in regards to my creative process, and why and when I'm actually being creative instead of just copying history in appropriate ways and places. 

Since starting the programme here, I feel like I've been flailing around a bit trying to figure out what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.  (in regards to my actual work, not career path)  It's sooo easy just to stay in the historically-accurate-clothing comfort zone, but I didn't come all this way just to do what I already know.  Of course, leaving the comfort zone is much easier said than done, and for the last month or so I feel like I've been just spinning my wheels and not really getting anywhere.

Then today I began really thinking about projects and drawings I've done in the past where I feel like I was actually achieving a level of originality, and I realised that in all of those cases I was pretending the characters were all for a video game.  This seems rather strange considering how much of a gamer I am not... in fact the only video game I've ever played all the way through was Fable.  The first one.  When it first came out years ago. 

Here's a little compare and contrast...

This sketch is one I did a weeks or two ago of ideas for the main character's wedding scene.  Pretty much straight up historical.

Then this evening I decided to approach the same character's costume in the same scene with the 'Video Game as influenced by History' approach, and ended up with this:

Without color (and in a not-very-well-lit phone pic) it's hard to properly tell what it is I see in my head, but I think this is definitely an approach I should try out.  Whether it works well in the long run or not I have no idea, but for now it seems to be worth exploring.

Calling Card and the Start of New Things

'Calling Card' created for my Design Methods in Context course.
The drawing illustrates the costuming themes I'm currently obsessed with, alongside a brief summary of my recent work/education experiences.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have recently moved to Scotland, and am in fact attending the University of Edinburgh College of Art doing a two year MFA program in Performance Costume.  Moving overseas was definitely kind of stressful... and it was really hard paring down my books and fabric stash and general possessions prior to moving.  I now own less that I ever have since I was a teenager before college, which feels super strange.  However, I am now settled in Edinburgh for the immediate future, and am really looking forward to seeing where the next couple years take me.

So what does this all mean for the blog?  Well, as it so happens, keeping a reflective journal of my research and current work is one of the key elements of my course.  I initially started a new, private blog where I began to write about and record my project, but on reflection I think it would make more sense to just integrate the journal into this blog.  For the next two years, the majority of my costuming and artwork will revolve heavily around my masters work, and I'm afraid if I don't include that work here, this blog will just sort of languish... a very undesirable fate!

The next few posts will contain journal entries from the last couple weeks, but in a day or two should transition into 'real time'.  My program is almost entirely self-directed, so it'll be great to interact with people and get feedback about my project here as well as in real life.

Plying my trade at Opsail

This past weekend was spent down in Norfolk for the big Opsail event, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.  I had promised to attend months ago, portraying a portrait artist/miniaturist of that era.  Both days I was there with Nicole, who was demonstrating shoemaking, while Samantha was only able to join us on Sunday.

Prior to the event, I didn't really know what to expect, and had the idea that I'd simply end up talking to people about artists and miniatures during the early 19th century, but that otherwise I'd be able to wander around and visit the tall ships and fort and whatnot.

To my great surprise and delight, people were genuinely interesting in my drawing, and, most specifically, in having me draw them.  I ended up doing a fairly brisk business with the small charcoal portraits, and aside from food breaks I did almost nothing but draw portraits straight the entire weekend.  It was definitely different to be at an event in a historical vendor type of mode as opposed to strict living history, but I must say I quite enjoyed it (even though I never did get to see all the ships). 

Apparently when I draw I look rather serious... I guess that must just be my 'concentrating' face, since I was actually really happy to be doing art again!

Naturally, I didn't get pictures of all the drawings I did for people, but I did get a quick snap of the sketch I did of the scrimshaw artist/sutler who was set up just a few tents down from me and one of Samantha.

Sketches from UTR

If doing something twice constitutes the beginning of a habit, then I have effectively formed the habit of doing little sketches of friends and acquaintances at reenactments.

I had enormous amounts of fun with this at Under the Redcoat, and even though I'm shockingly late posting about it, I wanted to share my drawings from the event.  Like last time, they are all fairly small (so as to fit in my drawing box) and are roughly 5x7" each. 

Nicole

Other-Sarah making ice cream

Sarah

I like this little sketch, but utterly failed to capture her likeness.  This was highly irritating.  See below.

Sarah (again) and Jenny

As you can see, for a brief while I switched from charcoal to graphite pencil... I was incredibly frustrated by my lack of ability to capture Sarah's likeness when initially using charcoal.  The second drawing was even worse (really bad in fact, and I can assure you it will never be posted anywhere online!) so I gave the graphite a try.  On this third go, this time in graphite, it wasn't totally awful so I let it be.

I feel like an invisible challenge has been laid down though.  Sarah is such an animated and vivacious person that capturing her in a flat, still format felt somehow a little unnatural and far more difficult than I had anticipated.  I will have to try again when I next see her.  And maybe again and again...

Abby

Right before I was about to leave for the day, I saw Abby walking across Market Square, rushed up to speak with her, and she kindly agreed to sit for me.   As we sat there (she very still and I sketching quickly) a lot of people apparently came up to see what was going on.   This included the official CW photographer who even videoed us.  I was blithely unaware of most of our audience however... I hadn't even realized how much I block out my surroundings when I'm drawing!  If there'd been an attack, I'd probably have died first.

Conclusion- I'll definitely be doing this drawing schtick again at my next reenactment.  I love being able to engage peoples' interest in a slightly different way than normal, and I'd really like to start building up an impression around the idea of a traveling portraitist.  Lots of very vague ideas at the moment, but it could certainly become something.

Greenfield Village Remembrance Day

I recently got back from a trip back to Michigan for my favorite Civil War event, Remembrance Day at Greenfield Village. It was really refreshing to see my family and good friends and spend some quality time away from the 18th century.

Due to utter sewing burn-out, I didn't make anything new for the event and the only preparation I did was to swap out the buttons on my wool asymmetrical dress.  I would have liked to have a new ballgown and a sheer dress and a complete male civilian outfit  (I have indulged in many fond daydreams of dressing as a boy and running around wonderfully free), but I suppose I didn't want any of it enough to actually pull out fabric and start sewing.

I did do something new this year though, and took some drawing supplies along with me to sketch at the event.

This little wooden box was a gift from a friend a few years ago, and it was the perfect size to kit out as a period-ish drawing set.  Inside I have a thin sketchbook/notebook, loose pieces of paper, graphite and charcoal pencils, a rubber eraser, and a pocketknife for sharpening the pencils.  On the outside the box is about 6"x 8" and is about 1.25" deep... the inner dimensions loose nearly .5" off those measurements.  I can just about fit in all the essentials, while it's still small enough to easily carry around or sit in my lap.

The sketches are naturally rather small, and were done rather quickly in about 5-10 minutes each.

Passersby seemed rather intrigued by the sight of whomever I was drawing sitting so still-ly in our camp, and a fair number came up to investigate.  There would be a few moments of awkward conversation as they tried to talk to my subject, who would reply without moving more than their mouth, (my friends make very good artist models... at least for short periods of time.  I have yet to test them with longer sittings.) before they noticed me sitting close by and saw what I was doing.  You could see the moment everything suddenly made sense to them, and I often heard, "Oh, you're drawing" in tones of happy surprise.

Unfortunately, I was not brave enough to venture out to draw people who were not part of my camp, but I suppose I'll have to address that deficiency next time.  Doing impersonal gestures is one thing, but as I am particularly fond of doing portraits, shyness is a luxury I can't really afford to indulge in.

Common men sketches

When breaking down the list of clothing in the ad from 1795, it was decided to mix and match the garments on a variety of figures.  We settled on having six figures total spread across three separate illustrations.

Naturally, the first step of any project is to sketch it in order to work out general composition and provide a point of reference for the painting.  Depending on how good my reference images are changes how detailed the sketch is.

I shamelessly ripped off the pose from Thomas Rowlandson's Seaman for this one.  As it's in public domain, the only real issue at hand is my oftimes inherent laziness.  However, the point of this project is to depict the clothing, not to create pieces of fine art.  In this instance (like when doing costume renderings) I'm quite content to cut a few corners.

Once the sketches were approved and changes discussed, it was time for the actual paintings to begin...