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Description
In addition to the set design, I also was the lead scenic painter for "God of Carnage." I like to personally paint my own sets, though many designers do not. In addition, at the level of theater I work at, it's hard sometimes to find people who can do this kind of work as volunteers. I did have a few assistants for this process (it's time consuming, painting something that covers the entire stage!), but the majority of the work you see is my own.
I thought it might be fun to share the process, for anyone who has ever wondered about painting something like this.
Photo 1: First, the stage is primed. Sometimes this isn't necessary, it the previous floor was all one color. But in our case, the previous show (Twelfth Night) had a very swirly pattern of dark and light blue over the entire stage, so priming took it back to a blank slate. We primed to white since the floor would be light colored. You can see that the front of the stage is still painted from "Twelfth Night" and the back wall is still painted from "Frankenstein" (it had been covered up by previous shows and somehow survived behind curtains). We taped off the center portion, which was going to be red.
Photo 2: Base coat.
Rolled out a nice solid base coat in a sandy color. Looks a little peach colored in the lighting here. The base coat is in a semi-gloss paint.
Photo 3: Lines
This step is tedious, and I had several helpers for it. We used a 8" wide board to figure out how wide each floorboard would be, then a straight edge was laid down. We started off with brown markers, but the lines weren't reading from a distance, so switched to hand painting thick brown lines, using the straight edge as a guide. Vertical lines were then added at measured distances so that the boards had a staggered look.
Photo 4: Texture!
I mixed up two different texture colors, one that was tinted slightly pink-brown, and the other was tinted blue-gray. These texture paints are acrylic heavily diluted with water, so they have almost the consistency of water colors. I used jagged old paint brushes with notches cut in them and painted all in one direction, painting each "board" individually so that no two were alike.
Photo 5: RED
The director wanted, originally, for the center of the stage to be red carpet. However, since there's a scene where this portion of the floor would get very wet, we decided it would be easier to clean if this was painted as well. I went with a very, very bright crimson color for the base coat. Then repeated the same steps for this section as for the outer two sections. The boards here were drawn much narrower (about 4" wide) and ran vertically instead of horizontally. The texture coat mixed browns and blacks.
Photo 6: DONE!
After it all cured for a full day, a couple of layers of clear, water-based polyurethane were laid down to give it a glossy look and to prevent it from getting scratched up by the actor's feet and any theater equipment that would be dragged over it when the set went up. Here you can see how it looks with the furniture and set in place.
One of the best compliments I got on this was from a long-time actor and theater patron who asked me, after one show, if we'd stripped the floor and stained it. He had to actually step on stage and look at it closely to realize that it was just paint!
Final set here:
Image size
800x2975px 1.42 MB
© 2014 - 2024 MelissaFindley
Comments14
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I didn't realize looking at your pictures that it was paint, either. i actually had to read your description. EXCELLENT work.