Tag Archives: Gilbert & Sullivan

Costume Designers, Rendering, Teaching

Costume Class Project: Designing in Cooperation

The “Lecture” (please read):

One of the first points that should be made about costuming is that it is part of a social organism. The organism may be part of a University theatre program, or part of a film production company, community theatre, Renaissance Faire producing group, television series producing studio, or professional repertory theatre, etc. However in all cases, costuming exists as a piece of a much bigger pie, in which costume is not the center, but a support to a larger whole. This is the key to understanding what we do. We exist as one of the heads of a multi-headed beast trying to create ‘ art.’ If we don’t talk or get along with the other heads, if we try to pull in the opposite direction from that which the rest of the beast is going, we trip over our own feet, and go nowhere at all.

Therefore, lesson number one: everyone must talk to each other, get to understand how one’s cohorts think, trade ideas, make suggestions, and then, when all the heads find a consensus on which way to go, go, go, go…..GO with commitment in the direction chosen, even if it means going over a cliff in one’s individual opinion.

This is very hard to do.

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Costume Designers, Teaching

Costume Class Project: Six Renderings for “Patience”

6 Renderings for “Patience” Project

Step 1: Using the data you found in the Historical Research Project incorporate your research into colored designs for 6 of the characters in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Patience

You need not follow the research slavishly, but the evidence of your sources should be apparent in your drawings. Then label your drawings something like this:

 

If you have difficulty drawing figures, you can print out some of the outline sheets below, and do your renderings on these sheets. Printing the sheet onto card stock will allow you to use watercolors without having the paper wrinkle

Another way of Making rendering easier is to make a “Dancing Man”:

Make this out of heavy card stock, connect the pieces with brads as shown in the center, and lay it on your paper to make different poses for your body-outlines.

Step 2

Scan and post the images you drew to your files section and post a notification on the message board that you have done renderings for this play and would appreciate feedback from the other students.