ICARUS Mugboard

Last year I was invited to do some illustration work for a Cambridge- based theater company called Liars&Believers. They were doing a new production call Icarus, which was loosely based on the Greek legend of Icarus and Daedelus, but was set in the depression-era American midwest of the1930's in a traveling carnival. The company director wanted several large carnival "freak-show" style banners that would refer to characters in the story and act as backdrops for the action. The show ran in Cambridge, and then went to the New York Musical Theater Festival and attracted some notice.

Cut to a year later, and the Liars&Believers company has been invited to re-stage the production at the American Repertory Theater as company-in-residence. The production, which is being performed at the Oberon Theater on Arrow Street, had an opportunity to expand the pre-show show, which consisted of magicians, dancers, sleight-of-hand artists, and other activities to put the audience in the mood for the carnival-style musical production. I was invited by the theater company this year, to create a "mugboard" in the same style as last years banners. A mugboard is one of those things you have probably seen at carnivals or amusement parks hundreds of times, a wooden board that have life-size figures painted on them with cutout heads, so you can stick your face through the hole and have your picture taken, appearing to be that character.

Because time was tight, I was given free reign to come up with the idea. Since I am partial to mermaids, I decided to do a sailor and a mermaid together.
I produced a couple of very quick thumbnail sketches. In one I had the sailor and mermaid on dry land, the sailor standing and the mermaid on a swing.

In another, I had the sailor and the mermaid underwater, with the mermaid's tail wrapped around the sailor's legs. The director liked that one the best, so I refined it a little bit.

I then gathered my reference, and produced a much more finished black and white sketch.

 

After initial approval for the black and white sketch, I added color in Photoshop, so that the director could see an approximation of what the final board would look like.

The stage manager Marc Ewart and I set up a temporary studio at the Old Town Hall in Salem. We primed a 4'x8' piece of .25" finish plywood with white primer. The plywood was slightly warped, so we screwed a stiffening frame of 1"x3's around the outer edge. The screws would make a hole in the surface of the board, but  since Marc planned on mounting the board to two upright metal poles, it wouldn't be a problem. Once the board was primed and stiffened, I secured the top of it to the wall with duct tape. We then used a Panasonic digital projector to project the sketch onto the board and drew in the outline with a thin bristle brush and black acrylic.

I had done the original sketch with my own measurements in mind. I am 6' 3". We quickly realized that unless we had a stepladder, most people wouldn't be tall enough to reach the openings for the faces. We had to adjust the image somewhat to get it to a height that would work for allowing an average-sized person to put their heads through the opening. We decided that 5' 6" would be a good average height for the faces, and we "squashed" the image somewhat by adjusting the lens on the projector. At the end of the first day, the board looked like this.

I came back the next day and started to add the color.

I worked with liquid acrylic. I  find it much easier to work with than mixing from tubes, however the liquid acrylic being less thick, generally does not cover as well so I needed to make sure that I mixed up a large enough batch (in a coffee cup)  so that I could be reasonably sure I could go over an area at least two times without running out, or remixing. I started to rough in the largest areas of color, going back to add detail, and make sure that the area was well saturated.

Here is the end of the second day's painting. You can see that the holes for the heads have not been cut out yet.

 The third day I went over the colors yet again, adding and refining the details. Marc cut out the holes for the heads using a router, and I sanded and painted the edges.

Here I am painting after the head-holes have been cut out. The final step was adding the tattoos to the sailor. This required mixing up an appropriate tattoo color (dark green and dark purple) and coming up with a convincing pattern of tattoos.

In my search for reference, I came across photos of a man named Captain Elvy. He was tattooed by a tattoo artist named "Sailor George" in 1943. He was the only example I could find of an American sailor, from about the right time period, with full-body tattoos. Working with a fine brush and starting at the shoulder, I worked my way down the figure of the sailor, covering him with tattoos from neck to wrist, and from knee to ankle. The final result looked like this.

I added a few more touch-ups and my part was done. Marc trimmed the top foot off of the board, and painted the back with white primer to meet the fire safety code. He also scruffed it up a bit to make it look beat-up and aged. The show opened on May 1st. Here is a photo of the board at the show with two people in it.

ICARUS Banners get a mention in the New York Times!

Back in May I did a post about a project I was working on for the Liars & Believers Theater production of  "Icarus". The show had a successful Boston premiere and was then invited to premiere the show at the New York Musical Theater Festival. Well they took the show to New York, where it ha been a success and was also reviewed favorably in the New York Times Arts section for Thursday July 25. The writer and director of the show Jason Slavick, e-mailed the article to the cast and crew last week . The link to the online article is here: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/new-york-musical-theater-festival-report-icarus/?_r=0.
The banners that I designed and painted were mentioned in the article:
"The world-weary Minnie (Aimee Rose Ranger) runs the show, separating customers from their nickels to peek at Turbo Frog Boy or to step into the Monster’s Maze (George Courage did the flavorful midway posters)...".
This is the first time I've ever been in the New York Times or had my work described as flavorful! I thoroughly enjoyed the show as well as the experience of producing these posters. Congratulations to Jason, and the entire Liars&Believers cast and crew!

ICARUS Banners

Back in January of this year I was contacted by Marc Ewart, production manager for the Cambridge-based theater company Liars&Believers.( liarsandbelievers.com ) They were workshopping a new play called ICARUS. It is based on characters from Greek myth, but was to be set in a 1930's depression-era traveling carnival somewhere in the midwest. The director, Jason Slavick was interested in having me produce a series of large sideshow banners that would act as backdrops for the action on stage. I met with the director, was intrigued and agreed to take on the project. After several months, changes in the story, cast and schedule I was given a final list of banners to design. 1) 3'x6' - Monsters Maze, 2) 3'x6'- Turbo FrogBoy, 3) 3'x6' - Passion Pavillion, 4) 4'x7' - Human Sea Cucumber, 5) 4'x7' - Spaghetti Girl & Human Vacuum.

I started researching vintage side show and carnival banners. I wanted the banners to look as much like actual banners as possible. This meant decorative scrollwork, hand-drawn type, bright colors, and lurid details.
The first thing I discovered in my research was that most sideshow banners were square or horizontally rectangular, and very large. The sizes I was given to work with were narrow, vertically oriented and a lot smaller. I would have to adapt the style to the new sizes.
In some cases I found a vintage posters with elements that were similar to what I needed and could be adapted for the final art, such as "Alligator Girl". She would eventually become "Spaghetti Girl".
There were also elements that were common to most of the banners I looked at, such as the decorative scrollwork trim and the "Alive" tag.
 I produced a series of black and white sketches.

 The director liked them, but there were some changes. The figure on "Passion Pavillion" needed to be sexier, "Turbo Frog Boy" needed a steam-punk styled monocle, "Monster's Maze" needed to lose the large figure in the foreground, and "The Human Vacuum"needed to embrace "Spaghetti Girl" in a more intimate way.
I did a second round of sketches.

These were approved and I moved to adding color to the designs. I tried to keep the colors bold and simple, with as many in common between banners as possible.

The color was approved. Now came the hard part; Transferring these to full-sized canvas panels and painting them by hand. Working with the production manager, we purchased rolled canvas and cut it to size. Originally they were to have a sewn pocket top and bottom for hanging, but this was changed to grommets. We located a studio space large enough to accommodate the banners and primed the canvas with a mixture of gesso and brown acrylic paint, to give the backgrounds a dingier tone. We then used an Artco projector to project the color sketches onto the canvas, painting in the outlines with a mixture of brown and black paint.

It took two men three full days to prime, transfer and color the banners. The show opens this coming weekend May 17, and 18.