Stage floor

Back in June I did some work experience as a scenic artist.

You can read more about that here.

Well the scenery I helped work on was for a production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens which is on at the National Theatre right now. In fact my parents went to see it last night.

I helped make the floor for the stage which was meant to look like paving stones.

First I had to spray the edges of the 1x1m wooden squares with a yucky brown paint.

Then they had to be sealed with button polish before we sprayed the surface with this gunky stuff to create texture. We did two layers of that, spreading it with a trowel each time, and then we painted on a grey wash.

We added rubber crumb around the edges of the squares to look like the dirt and moss that gets in the cracks of paving.

If you watch this video you can see all the staging being installed, including that glorious floor.

It's pretty cool to see it being used, having spent some long, tiring days many months ago working on it.

Also, there was an exhibition at the National Theatre about the making of Timon of Athens which I saw when I visited during the summer.

There were photos of every part of the production, including some photos of the floor being made.

Except they must have been taken the week after I was there!

Otherwise I totally would have been in them.

Work experience

Sorry if things have been a bit quiet around these parts this week, but I've spent six days doing work experience as a scenic artist.

I started at 8am each day. Let's remember that I'm a student, an art student at that, so this was an achievement in itself.

It was for a company called Set-Up (Scenery) who build sets for theatre productions.

I got to wear these lovely overalls. But the end of the week they were a lot less white.

I spent most of my time working on the floor for an upcoming Shakespeare play at the National theatre. We were making wooden panels look like paving stones.

This involved sealing many, many 1x1metre squares of wood with button polish, then applying two layers of texture to them but spraying a thick, white mixture and smoothing it out with a trowel.

The spray is what's on my shoes. They used to be pink.

Then we applied a paint wash and I learnt that scenic art is a lot about how well you can flick water with a large brush.

It was really interesting to find out how they create paving stones, having made miniature ones for my degree show house.

Hopefully I'll be able to share photos when it's all installed in the theatre later in the year.