Stage Costume Final

I am back in school and majoring in theater with my emphasis in costume design. It's a tough road, very time consuming, but very much worth the time (Or so I'm told.) My stage costume class which is an intro level class required for all theater majors was only a half semester class. We all read and designed for the same show, James and the Giant Peach. It was a lot of fun to see how different designers interpret different things. Some of them I loved, some I secretly thought were awful, but I loved what my teacher said at the beginning of the semester, "There is more than one right answer."

When I read the play I refused to go watch the movie (I haven't seen it since I saw it at the Rainbow Theater in Redlands, California when I was 11 years old.) But my vision was the British invasion, focusing on the late fifties into the sixties. I also didn't want to do a literal translation of the insects, adding legs and pinchers and antennas, etc. So I stuck to the colors, the textures, and the shapes of the insects. Researching spiders and centipedes gave me the biggest willies. I hated it.

The Grasshopper

Aunt Sponge & Aunt Spiker

Ladybug

James

The Earthworm

The Centipede

Miss Spider

The last thing I want to talk about is what I learned from this assignment.  

1-I learned to draw bodies, THEN draw the clothes on them. My favorite place for poses, if I don't have a model, is Pose Maniacs. Which is a lot like that human body display that's been going around the world?

2-I'm really bad at faces, I draw eyes too big, and I am terrible terrible terrible at hands. Must work on that.

3-I did this assignment with prisma color pencils and inktense pencils which was good for some things (in fact, inktense pencils are pretty incredible), but I usually do watercolors, which I like better. So I need to practice with more mediums such as Markers, intense pencils, prisma colors, chalks and pastels, etc.  (If you want a good website with amazing deals on art products, I'm addicted to Jerry's Artarama.

4- Detail is worth the time it takes. From the lace on the spider to the cable knit sweater on the earthworm to the plaids, detail is worth the trouble.