Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #12

Cobalt Studios

Final Project:  Translucency

Recap
Three weeks of intensive scene painting instruction were drawing to an end.  I credit Rachel Keebler and Kimb Williamson with creating a program that the value per dollar is unmatched anywhere.  It was relatively inexpensive.  Scenic artists wishing to receive this training would be hard pressed to find a better value anywhere.  First, it's the best training available, and second when you include housing and food into the fees, the tuition looks pretty modest.

Rachel and Kimb never seemed bored with what they were doing.  Always engaged, always energetic, always in the moment, always teaching.  There was no wasted time at Cobalt.  It was fun for me to spend eight hours a day with a paintbrush in my hand again.  It had been a long time since I had been able to do that.

Week one, we were in the studio for about eight hours a day.  Week two we averaged between eight and ten hours a day, depending if we went back to the studio to finish things after dinner.  Week three, I spent about twelve hours a day in the studio, and loved every minute of it.  I wanted to make sure I finished every project and finished them well.  Rachel and Kimb were in the studio for most of this time.  I did some math while I was there and figured that the time spent in the classroom by the teachers in those three weeks would have equaled the time I spent in the classroom in two semesters.

That's intense.  Two semesters worth of work in three weeks.  I came back to BYU-Idaho and immediately taught scene painting.  We met two times a week in three hour blocks.  And we got through almost exactly half of what we did at Cobalt.  I loved my time there.  I would go back again in a heartbeat.

The Final Project
After the tiger on velour project, we began our translucency project.  Cobalt employees had been working behind the scenes sizing muslin for our last project.  They had stretched muslin on half the studio floor and put two coats of starch on it.  As a class, we then put a final coat of starch on that side.  To do a translucency, it takes three coats of medium to heavy starch on one side and two coats of medium to heavy starch on the other side to create the conditions for this project.

While the third coat of starch was drying, we sat in the classroom and listened to Rachel and Kimb teach about the steps and techniques involved with painting a translucent drop.  The idea behind a translucent drop is to paint an image on the front and a different image on the rear so that when the light shifts from frontlight to backlight, the image shifts.To do that, you have to paint the front in more of a watercolor style, in other words no opaque paint.

Since Kimb was my mentor on the previous project, Rachel was my mentor on the translucency.  I was given two images, as was each of the students.  We were all painting different things.  I was given a photo of a pagoda in the sunset with sunbeams bursting through at the horizon.  The other image I was given was of another pagoda, but this one was at dusk or early morning and was hazy.  I was to paint the first image on the front, but use the color scheme and lighting style of the second image.  Then on the back I was to paint the setting sun.  The idea was that when the piece was lit from the front it would look more like the second image but when it was lit from the back it would look like the original image.

Once we were given the images, we were to spend a half an hour or so and develop our best guess at a plan of attack.  We were to write down all of our questions ahead of time and then schedule a visit with our mentor to have our questions answered.  The idea was that we were supposed to replicate the meeting between a scene designer and the charge artist.  These are the images I received.

The first image.  Note the sticky notes.  They were my questions for the designer

The image for the paint scheme on the front.  Not recreating the actual image, just the paint job

I added this picture to show the scale of the image

To restate, I was to paint the figurative stuff (the pagoda) from the first image but with the lighting and coloration of the second image on the front.  Then on the back I was to paint it in such a way that when it was backlit, the image would shift to the lighting of the first image.  I think that is clear.

Step #1:  Sizing and The Test Flat
The shop employees had already sized the muslin twice with starch on one side, and then we as a class did the third application.  We did that at the end of business one day and then came in the next and cut the muslin into the sizes we all needed.  Then we stapled it directly to the floor (which was covered with homasote and bogus paper).  We stapled the unsized side up, then we proceeded to put one more coat of starch on it.  When that was dry we added a second.  In total, to get the translucency, it takes five coats of starch.  Three on the backside and two on the front.

In addition to the regular piece, I also stapled some sized muslin to a small test flat and added the extra coats of starch to it as well.  When working with complex paint jobs, it's important to create a test flat.  It's better to test things and find out if they work or not on something you aren't committed to rather than making a costly mistake on a full size piece.

I approached my test flat in an organized fashion, making notes with a sharpie pen here and there.  I tried several things and found some that worked well and some that didn't necessarily.  I had painted translucently before, but never on two sides.  I knew from previous experience that anytime you add white paint to another paint it begins to turn it opaque.  That is the kiss of death in a translucent drop.  I have learned that if you wish to make something lighter, just like in watercolor, you use the background (in this case the muslin) as a lightener and add water to the paint.  Because I have been a watercolorist in the past, this seemed intuitive to me.

I used Rosco Supersaturated paint on the front.  I think I used straight burnt sienna for the light color and van dyke brown for the dark.  I think those are the colors I used.  Because Supersaturated paint is heavily pigmented, it's possible to thin it with water many times and still have punchy color but create a translucency.  All of those things together seem like they'd cancel each other out, and yet it works.

The last size coat applied

The test flat, front side

When I was satisfied that I had the right combination of paints for the front side of my piece, I turned my attention to the backside of the test flat.  I used Dharma Pigment Dye for the sunbeams.  The pigmented dye is very powerful and you get a lot of bang for your buck.  Once I had the back painted, I took it to the back room where we could go dark and I put a light behind it.  It worked.  I showed it to Rachel and she seemed to get excited by it.  That was encouraging to me.

The backside with pigment dye and opaquing 

Step #2:  The Base Coat
I put the burnt sienna in a garden sprayer and sprayed the entire piece with the lighter color.  When you paint with a garden sprayer, it's important to keep your nozzle in the same orientation for the entire pass.  It's important to start off of the work and spray onto it and also to finish the pass off of the work.  Then you don't get dark spots.  It's also important to paint rapidly.  It took longer to mix the paint and strain it into the garden sprayer than it did to actually paint the piece.  One other thing I learned about garden sprayers is it is important to give them a name.  The reason for that is if you have used the sprayer named "Marvin" and liked the way it painted you can count on it to paint the same way as it did the last time when you use it again.  Lots of cool tricks I learned at Cobalt.

Spraying this

Took less

Than

A minute

Step #3:  The Pounce and TUFBAK
While the base coat was drying, I converted my image to a transparency on the copier and projected it onto a piece of brown kraft paper.  Then I made a pounce.  A pounce is when you perforate a design into kraft paper and then use powdered charcoal to transfer the image to another surface.

I transferred the image to the muslin, then I used the same pounce and transferred the image to a product called TUFBAK, which is four foot wide masking tape essentially.  I never knew it came in four foot widths!  I transferred the image to two pieces of the TUFBAK, one on the front and the other on the backside.  More on that later.

The overhead projector, an indispensable tool of the scenic artist

Image transferred to kraft paper with sharpie pen

Pounced and ready to hit with the charcoal bag

Rubbing the charcoal bag on the pounce

what that looks like

The image transfer

In closeup

Once the image was transferred to the piece, I then transferred the image to the TUFBAK.  I put two pieces of TUFBAK together, front to back, then transferred my image to it.  I had them pinned together so they wouldn't move, then when I cut it I only had to cut once to have a mirror image.  That would come in handy when I painted the backside.

I then placed the TUFBAK to the front of the work to mask it.  Then I was ready to spray the van dyke brown in the areas where the pagoda was.  Anywhere you have a seam with the TUFBAK it's important to cover it with a strip of masking tape.  It's better that way.

TUFBAK applied to the openings in the pagoda

The sheet of  TUFBAK on the cutting table

The TUFBAK applied

Getting ready to paint

The van dyke brown sprayed on

A couple of coats to get the depth I wanted

Step #4:  Aerial Perspective and Details
The second image had an element of aerial perspective to it that the first image did not.  I asked Rachel if she wanted me to replicate that in my piece.  She indicated that she did.  I cut a piece of kraft paper in a horizon shape and laid it down over the pagoda to act as a friskit.  Then I sprayed the van dyke brown again.  That gave me a foreground that was a little darker than the pagoda in the midground.

When that was dry, I came in with a small fitch brush and put in some tree shapes similar to what was on the horizon on the first image.  I also used that to fix a couple of mistakes.

The aerial perspective painted on with a friskit

Details painted on with a small fitch brush

Step #5:  The Backside Opaquing
With the front done, it was time to turn the piece over and begin painting the backside.  The first thing I did, once it was turned was to place the mirror image of the TUFBAK on the piece.  Then I put a thinned version of the opaquing paint in a PreVal sprayer and painted in the areas around where I wanted the sunbeams to be.  I also painted the backside of the pagoda with two or three coats of the opaquing paint in the PreVal.

Spraying the sunbeams with opaquing paint

The opaquing paint was made with equal parts Benjamin Moore white paint and Benjamin Moore black paint.  Rachel likes to use a grey paint for opaquing because it's easy to see where it is.  You could use pure white paint for opaquing, but then you wouldn't be able to see it very well as you painted.

When I was done with the PreVal, I then brush painted the rest of the opaquing on the pagoda and the ground.  I used the PreVal to blend between the brush painted parts and the sprayed parts.  The transition was very important.

Brush painted juxtaposed with spray painted opaquing

Then I used a custom cut roller to create the ripple marks in the water.  We pour paint onto a food service tray and then use that as a charging surface for the cut rollers, much as we did with the foliage project.  When the opaquing was done, it was time to remove the TUFBAK.

Painting the ripple marks with a custom cut roller

All the opaquing done including the ripples

Sometimes this is the scenic artist's best friend

Step #6:  Kitty Litter and Dharma Pigment Dyes
I added kitty litter to the circle where the sun was supposed to peek out between the columns of the pagoda.  Kitty litter is a great friskit.  Then I added the yellow Dharma pigment dye.  I sprayed it from a garden sprayer over the entire backside of my piece.

Kitty litter sun

Yellow Dharma dye on everything

After the Yellow Dharma dye was dry, I added a bit more kitty litter in strategic places and then I was ready to add the orange Dharma dye.  I painted the bottom part of the water, as it looked on the first image, and I also sprayed the orange on the pagoda.  For the orange I used a PreVal sprayer because I felt I had more control with that.  I also brush painted some of the pagoda and the trees on the horizon line, but that was probably because I took the TUFBAK off a little before I should have.  With proper coaching from Rachel, though I fixed that problem.  I got the feeling from both Rachel and Kimb that they wanted each of us to be successful.  I got that the entire time I was at Cobalt.

More kitty litter

Orange Dharma dye

Step #7:  The Last Thing
After we were all done with our pieces, we spent about an hour cleaning the studio while we waited for our pieces to dry.  This was our last project and the studio was going to be closed for a few weeks for vacations and such.  We needed to get it ready for the next group of students.  Once the paintings were dry, we did show and tell.

There were lights hung in the studio that would shine on the front of the work and other lights that were hung to shine on the backside.  There were different colors of gel on some of the lights so we could change the images.  Rachel acted as lighting designer and started out with regular front light on each piece in turn.  Then she'd change the color of the front light to blues or pinks to show what colored light could do to a paint job.  The lighting designer can make or break a great paint job.  It's important to collaborate with them.

After we had exhausted all of our possibilities with front light, Rachel then turned on the backlight so we could see how successful our translucency was.  She also mixed in some front light here and there so we could really see what light does to paint.

I was pretty nervous when my piece was hung up.  Rachel confided to me when I turned the piece over what the degree of difficulty was of this project.  I wasn't confident that I had succeeded at that point.  She turned on the front light, then she added blue light, then she injected the backlight.  Kimb said only one word.  "Stunning."

The front of the painting in regular light

Backlight

With a little blue frontlight on it

I truly enjoyed my time at Cobalt Studios.  I learned so much.  I grew as a painter, and I think I grew as a teacher of scenic painting.  It was a dream come true for me.  I had wanted to study at Cobalt for so long that I felt (as Scrooge would say) as "giddy as a schoolboy."  I didn't take the experience for granted.  I worked hard every day to learn what was being taught.

Thank you Kimb, thank you Rachel.  This was a grand experience for me.

Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #5

Cobalt Studios 

Finished Woodgrain
While we painted the weathered wood, there was a certain amount of dry time that we had to deal with.  To combat that, and to make the best use of our time, Rachel and Kimb would have us work on two projects simultaneously.  While the weathered wood was drying, we worked on our finished wood project, and vice versa.

Step #1:  Cartooning
Most great paint jobs begin as great drawings.  When we draw our projects in scene painting, we call it cartooning.  For the finished woodgrain project, our cartooning began with a pounce.  A pounce is a piece of brown kraft paper with a design perforated into it that powdered charcoal is then rubbed on.  The powdered charcoal falls into the perforations and leaves a trace on the work.  The pounce we used only dealt with the corners of the wood panels we were to paint.

Once the pounce has been applied, we used straight edges and permanent markers mounted in a bamboo to complete the drawing.  We use permanent markers so they will bleed up through the first few layers of paint to give us indication lines.  By the time we are done, the marker lines won't be visible, but they will guide us until that point.

Muslin after the pounce has been applied

Inking with a standing straight edge

The piece as inked

Step #2:  Base Coat

I probably need to mention that prior to the pounce and inking, we primed our flats with starch.  I never skip the priming step.  It's a recipe for disaster to do that.  Just recently, I was walking across the stage where I work and noticed the trap door cover after the stage floor had been painted.  I pointed out to my student, "Remember how told you I can always tell if something has been primed or not?"  Then I pointed it out to them and they got it.

Our base coat was very similar to the base coat we had for weathered wood, except it was a little more refined and we used warmer, cleaner colors.  We used orange and yellow earthy colors for our scumble.  Once again, it was like a hybrid ombre/scumble.  Long strokes lightly blended along the length of the wood pieces we were painting.

We always start in the "lowest" point, in this case where the panels were going to be.  The section in the middle where all the graining is vertical is where we started.  Then, while that paint was still wet, we painted the horizontal portions above and below.  The reason we start that way is so we don't have to be careful on the first step.  We can paint with reckless abandon because we're going to come back and clean up the edges with the paint that covers them up.

In this step, it's important to remember the horizontal trim pieces in the recessed panels.  The scumble always follows the direction of the woodgrain you are going to paint.

Unfortunately, I don't have photos of the whole process here, only the finished thing.  Just know that the middle section of vertical stripes was painted first.  Notice how the permanent marker is showing through.

Step #3:  Graining

For this step, we used our one inch Purdy to create the woodgrain.  We had a handout on different kinds of woodgrain and we had been taught about how the different types of woodgrain grow and are cut for display.  Then we had practiced on the bogus paper.  We were ready to go.

The first step was to woodgrain the recessed panels.  I like a good "cathedral" woodgrain in recessed or raised panels.  It just looks more elegant.  I made an attempt to bookmatch the panels, meaning making them a mirror image of each other.  I put a scrap of bogus paper on the top and bottom of the panel as a friskit to keep the paint from the sections I didn't want that type of woodgrain on.  I also did some individual graining with the Purdy on a couple of the other boards.

When that was done, I took a custom brush for woodgraining, a four inch chip brush that had been cut up for just this purpose and filled in the straight grain.  We used a wash of burnt umber for the woodgrain.

Bookmatched cathedral woodgraining in the panels

Custom graining brush

The graining of the whole piece.  Notice the transition from the Purdy to the custom brush on the lowest board

Step #4:  The Wash

We wanted this to look like a cherry finish on our piece of wood, so we used a burnt sienna wash over the whole thing.  The wash tends to bring everything into the same world.  It provides a lens through which the whole piece can be seen.  In the picture above, the graining and the base coat look broad and obvious.  The wash blends them.  

It is important to paint the wash in the same direction as the woodgrain.  At this point I'd like to say something about the choice of colors we used.  We used yellow and orange earth colors for the base, a greenish brown for the woodgrain and a reddish brown for the wash.  What that means is that this piece of woodgrain will respond to just about any color of light a lighting designer can throw at it.  It will look good in just about any color of light.

The wash applied

Step #5:  Shade and Shadow, Dark Toner

The most important thing to remember when doing this kind of trompe l'oeil work is light source.  Where is your light?  What direction is it coming from?  What will it strike first?  How long will the shadows be that are cast from it?  Imperative.

At this point, we had a classroom discussion where we were given sheets of paper which had a drawing of each of the different kinds of moulding we would be painting the highlights and shadows on.  We took charcoal and chalk and drew in the shadows and the highlights for each type of moulding.  Having the worksheets available was very helpful when painting our details.  We taped the paper at or near the part we were going to be painting so we'd have that ready reference.  I'm always amazed at novice painters that think they can paint from their minds without the reference.

There were four worksheets total.  One had the detail of the crown moulding.  One was the top left corner of the recessed panel.  One was the bottom right corner of the recessed panel and the last one was for the base moulding.  Once you complete the worksheets correctly, the painting becomes pretty easy.  It's much harder if you have to just think about it.

In order to replicate the roundness of some of the moulding, you have to paint the fuzzy lines that were talked about in a previous blog post.  Essentially, you paint a strip of clear water on the edge you wish to be fuzzy, then draw a brush with paint in it along the straightedge on one side and the clear water on the other.  A little bit of futzing on the water side and voila, a fuzzy line.  Fuzzy line painting at Cobalt was one of the great revelations for me.  I had painted things like that before, but this time it was institutionalized and put there for a purpose.  The teaching had been codified.

All of the shades and shadows were painted with a lining stick and a brush on bamboo.  None of this is freehand.

We painted the shades first.  Shade is the shadow that is on the object which is more like where the absence of light is.  For that we used burnt umber and ultramarine blue mixed together and thinned to a transparent wash.  

Next we painted our cast shadow.  A cast shadow is that shadow that falls away from the light from one object to another object.  Our cast shadows were ultramarine blue and velour black, mixed and thinned.  In other words Payne's Grey.  

We also added a little dark toner for areas where two pieces of wood came together in the same plane but we wanted to make a little distinction between them.  Dark toner was just our shade color thinned a bit more.  It's a very subtle thing but very beautiful.  In the finished piece you don't really see the dark toner but you feel it.

The shades painted

The worksheets

Shade, cast shadow and dark toner applied

Step #6:  Highlights and Zingers

The highlights were mixed, once again by taking the local color (one of our base colors) and adding the color of light to them.  For this we chose an amber light so our highlight was an orange/yellow.  Some of the highlights, like the shade are on rounded objects.  They needed a fuzzy line as well.  For me, I like shadows to be transparent and regular highlights to be translucent.  The zinger, which is also called the flash is painted opaquely.  It's very small and is the highlight color with white added.

The highlight was added to the edges of the recessed panel, or the trim around it and we painted a fuzzy line in the concave curve in the mouldings.  When that was dry, we added the zinger color with a straightedge and a very thin brush to give that extra bit of drama and authenticity.  I don't like a zinger to go all the way across in an unbroken line.  I like it to come and go a bit.  I don't think I was completely successful with that point on this project.

Highlights added.  Notice the translucent quality of the highlight in the moulding

And the zinger added.

Step #7:  Bounce Light and Cut Lines

Bounce light is a secondary light source.  For example, in this piece we decided that the main light source would be a window from the top left.  That light would be amberish.  Our secondary light source was from a fireplace directly in front of the panel and at ground level.  This bounce light was more orange than the highlights.  Bounce light is kind of subtle, or it should be.  Subtle is a relative term, however because if you paint it too subtly, in a larger house it might get lost.  What we think is broad from up close may read better in a thousand seat auditorium.

The last step, after the bounce light has been placed is the final cut line.  We use straight velour black for the cut line.  The cut line is a very thin line painted with a one inch Purdy, in the deepest part of the shadow, where one surface joins to another or a change in elevation.  In other words a cut line is a transitional line.

Bounce light added.  Notice the bright orange line at the top left and in the upper moulding in the recessed panels

The cut line.  I photographed this while the cut line was still wet.  Serendipitously, the location of the cut line show up in the picture pretty well.

The Finished Piece

Once our work was dry, we all put them up around the room and talked about them.  I have two pictures, one a close up of just this woodgrain and the other which shows both pieces, the weathered wood and the finished wood, together to show how it was painted.

The two pieces together

Closeup of the finished woodgrain project

This was a very rewarding project.  I think it turned out pretty well.  I am pleased with it.  Once again, you have to be able to see the end from the beginning.  I think that's one of the most important skills a scenic artist can learn.  

After twenty-five years, I finally got to study at Cobalt!  I hope to go back sometime.  Wonderful experience.