The first major project I've been working on, and completed, was a wood grain block quilt for my scenic painting class. The goal of the project was to teach us step by step how to paint a realistic wood grain. At first, I was TERRIFIED of this project, but watching my professor doing the steps each day made me realize how actually it actually is.
The first step is to obviously lay out the design you want on a primed piece of wood or flat. You then take your base colors and lay them out in haphazard but neatish stripes in order to establish the direction of your wood grain.
The next step is to actually paint on your wood grain. There are several different types of wood grain tools out there in order to establish the figure grain you want. For our borders, we had to paint a figure grain, and then the inside pieces are straight-grain. These were accomplished by swiping a dark brown type of paint on the board and then using the various tools to achieve the look you want.
The third step is to lay out what my professor calls the bright glaze over the top of your wood grain. The bright glaze is responsible for the warmth look that your wood has. As you can see, there are going to be 3 different types of wood color schemes in the end product.
The final steps are to add the dark glaze and to outline your shapes in a marker to give it a clean finish. The dark glaze adds the final dimensionality and the woodsy feel of the wood. This is my final wood grain block quilt. Needless to say, I am quite proud of it!
The other project that has been eating up my time is a 1/4 inch scale model of a set we had to design for a play we read in our Intro to Theatre Design class. The play we were given is Two Sisters and a Piano. We had to read the script, and come up with a ground plan for how our dream set would look like. We then had to take that ground plan and build a full-color model of it in 1/4 inch scale (and for those of you who don't know what that means: 1/4 inch on my model is equal to 1 foot of the actual set). I struggled a bit with the making of this model as I had never really worked with or made such tiny pieces. All in all, I am happy with the final result!
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| "Two Sisters and a Piano" Set Model |
Like I said, I haven't really done anything other than those few projects in the last couple weeks. I am currently in the airport waiting for my flight to go visit my grandparents. I won't have anything for a couple weeks but as soon as something exciting happens, I'll let you know!
