Painting backdrops

[Skimble]

We've just got some canvas backdrops to add flexibility for our school productions but I'm coming to realise that it's not going to be as easy as simply painting them as we want them. I'm struggling to find consistent guidance on the web and realised that I'd passed up on the opportunity to ask the real experts here. ;)

 

Please could you advise on issues such as sizing/priming, watering down (what sort of?) paint, maintaining fire retardancy, keeping the cloths flexible as scenes are painted over etc. If there's a good book on all of this then I'm happy to get that instead (recommendation will obviously save lots of time for contributors!).

 

My key concern is that having bought these cloths those who use them will wreck them, so before I let anyone get their hands and brushes on my canvas I want to lay down the rules, it's just that I don't know what rules I need to lay down!

 

Thank you. :)

[johnboy]

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1351237301&searchurl=an%3Dhoggett%2Bchris%26sortby%3D3%26tn%3Dstage%2Bcrafts

 

isbn 0-7136-1557-5

 

stage craft - chris hoggett.

 

I found this book really good for when you need help on making scenery. it has pages on scaling up/priming/ colour mixing/ gauzes/ cloths/ painting techniques for different effects and many other things.

 

it is old (1975) I think but I'm sure other guys on here will be able to recommend better ones.

 

just my 2p.

[ramdram]

Years ago, in a village far, far away, we used to repaint the backdrops for every show. We used donated emulsion paint, often beyond its sell by date, and mixed it to whatever shades the Dir. wanted. After a few layers the cloth became remarkably heavy and the paint tended to crack.

 

However, seeing as any cracking was far too distant for the punters in the front row to see we used to not worry about that at all.

 

Sizing is just a case of painting the first coat with diluted emulsion. Perhaps your art dept can help? Fire retardency (sp?) is something you can accomplish with a proprietary solution at the end of a google. Used to be alum when I were a lad at school. Plus there is nothing to stop you trying to ignite a corner on an edge to see what might happen conflagration wise. Obviously this is best done outside with fire extinguishers, without pupils.

 

Yes they will get torn and mishandled but that is par for the course.

 

You did not mention if they are to be flown in or are just rolled up behind your upstage groundrow and hauled up into position...either way you will have to expect some wear and tear. again you can google for ways and means to build groundrows or effect the flying/hauling into position.

 

They will, possibly, have to be fixed to a pair of battens top and bottom, but very strongly suggest these are not 4" x 2". Seeing as you are a school, possibly you have a woodwork dept? Suggest the woodwork master does the cobbling for you; art dept do the sizing and drama and art does the scenic stuff. That way everyone involved has ownership of the project and adds to the overall team spirit. Your profile says you know all that stuff anyway.

 

Sounds like it will be a fun project.

[callumb]

Use rosco super saturated paints. They contain latex meaning that there is no cracking. http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif Its all we used when we painted the set in college.

[Skimble]

Thanks folks,

 

Awaiting Stage Crafts (a snip at just 1p + P&P on Amazon!) and then will hit the canvas. They're all going to be on swipe tracks and will, hopefully, get tidied away after each use, so hoping that wear and tear isn't going to get them before Christmas at least! No need for lumps of wood anywhere, fortunately, and the Rosco paint I shall specify as essential unless directors wish to buy me some new cloths!

 

Obliged to you for your comments.

[paulears]

Hang on - slow down! You are putting canvas on wipe tracks - this can be pretty tricky because proper scenic canvas painted with acrylics rather than dyes can be a problem when done by beginners because the paint is quite thick, and even the Rosco stuff can crack if close folded, as on wipe tracks where is gets clumped up and tied when off. If you use emulsion, watered down, it's pretty flexible on scenic canvas - but the watering down lowers the saturation of the colours.

 

A quick side bar - the big manufacturers of emulsion type paint often give it away to schools and colleges when they change ranges. You will have to sign a note saying it won't be resold and if disposed of, you will be responsible for any costs. I got 3 pallet loads offered from Dulux if we collected, all discontinued colours. Sounded a great idea, and I came back to college with a truck load of paint - and then discovered they were matchpots! Oops.

 

Squaring and upscaling works really well with students, and we produced some excellent examples on walls. The results on cloth were, er, less good. The main issue was you do need a way of tensioning the cloth and keeping it taut. The second thing is shrinkage - the projects completed over around 10 weeks meant that new batches of paint would be mixed, with slightly different water/paint ratios, so colour matching was horrible, and the 'wetter' painted areas would shrink more producing a puckered finish. Watered down worked better on calico as it's thinner. Canvas would take thicker paint, but crack in places if folded. The two tins of Rosco proper scenic paint worked much better - but we persevered with emulsion because it was easy to experiment mixing with, and cheaper, of course. For what it's worth, the most common colour produced by by students (and me) was brown - a zillion shades of it! I think I'd still be wary of doing a cloth for use on a wipe track, first time. Air brushes work very well, but that's a bit more advanced and harder work cleaning!

[Skimble]

Urgh! I know these things shouldn't be too simple, because that would suggest that not a great job is being done, but why so many things to consider?!?!

 

We have wipe tracks, and no room for flying anything in, which is why we're going for the wipe track option on backdrops. We hired cloths in for our last production at great expense (great, that is, given the budget that we have in a school that's tightening its belt) and the producers loved them and want to have cloths for every production we now have. We need now to work round the problem of potential cracking even when using the 'right' paint.

 

If watering down emulsion aids flexibility but lowers colour intensity, does that mean that you end up putting more layers of watered-down paint to create the impact that's required, thus not actually reducing the amount of paint applied?

 

How intense does the colour need to be to show up under stage lighting? Can/should Rosco paint be watered down and to what extent does it affect saturation, especially if using the super-saturated paint? How long could one expect it to take to paint one 5m x 8m canvas? (Is ten weeks a likely time-scale for a bunch of amateurs?)

 

I fear the next responses will generate an even longer list of questions, but appreciating what's come back so far, even if it is mostly cautionary.

[paulears]

The problem is that ordinary emulsion is designed to go onto walls, quite thickly. Paint for cloths is more akin to the types used by the art and fabrics people. Some has to be sprayed, so it needs to be liquid not solid. The scenic paints are heavy in colour and light in binders. If you find a decorators centre who still have the manual colour mixing gadget, you'll find the colour you want made up of so many mL of deep blue, a small squid of yellow, then a big squidge of a cream colour and then some white. I wanted some really deep blue, so got them to leave out the yellow, the cream and the white. They stated that they couldn't guarantee what would happen, but I persisted. The same quantity of the proper paint would have been 5 times the price. Good value. I stuck it onto a wall. Looked amazing. Not so next day. Those funny colours weren't for colour - they were binders and clever chemistry to make the paint 'stick'. The paint slowly slid down the wall, revealing the white paint below, rather a nice graduated effect, but not at all what I wanted. It took three days for the water content to evaporate enough to stabilise it.

 

To do it properly, we used Rosco Off Broadway Ultramarine Blue. This range is a proper scenic acrylic paint - and isn't as thick as home emulsion, so won't crack.

 

I found a really useful faq on the Rosco site - which explains some of the complicated bits

 

EDIT

When I was teaching I decided it would be good to attempt some scenic painting by the 'plugs' people - those that liked lighting and sound, but were pretty hopeless at the more 'arty' techniques. I dug up this picture showing their first attempt at painting a wall - using a pretty well known image in a cartoon-ish style. Basically taking a small image, squareing it up onto a big wall, and then simply copying, square by square. So, scenic painting can be done on a biggish scale - these people were on a Level 2 BTEC - so shows what is within their ability range - which oddly seemed about the same as mine (but of course, as the teacher, we never owned up to that).

http://www.earsmedia.co.uk/w4-pic1s.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_7pYkVtOAa7c/TENjubnRuTI/AAAAAAAAAOs/KS-u9Q8Myw8/s1600/roy4%5B1%5D.jpg

The original Roy Lichtenstein image

[ramdram]

Is ten weeks long enough? Crikey Skimble, in this far off village the set painter and his/her half dozen mates (not pros at all you understand,) would knock out three backdrops about 3mtrs by 6mtrs, over a long weekend and a couple of evenings just in time for tech and dress. Granted this involved long days but still included pub breaks.

 

This would be a wash over the last scene then chalk in the design. Seeing as there is "ALWAYS" a thatched cottage with ivy or rambling rose, or giants/ogres' castle it was simple as because everyone knew how to draw paint one of course. Rose petals were simply a splodge of red dashes over some leaves/branches. From even 5mtrs away it looked not bad and from the back row it looked very nice indeed.

 

IE, you only have to create an impression of a rose, not something out of the archives at Kew. We used to be able to use the floor of the VH (booked for the fortnight...rehearsals/blocking wotever) so the backdrops could dry off. First wash was with rollers with folk attacking from top and bottom. All the paint was premixed and divided into trays for non dappled look...well, sort of.

 

(Flats were 4x8 hardboard, with bracing and stiffeners. A tree was a 4x8 sheet with huge scallop in the long side to stage...straight side behind leg. Top under the border, not that we called it that at the time, ** laughs out loud **:

 

http://www.sewwhatinc.com/description_stage.php

 

Bottom half was roots, narrowing to trunk and out gain for branches/foliage...it's always summer in pantoland so brown wash with darker vertical streaks for bark. Leaf canopy with the odd brown "twig" and as many shades of green to do the leaves moving in a breeze effect.)

 

As said before why not involve all depts. The art dept has got to know how to draw a castle outline.

[Skimble]

The ten week thing was from one of Paul's posts, although I realise that was a whole project. I was hoping/expecting things to be a lot quicker than that - thanks for the reassurance.

 

Is there any merit in adding some latex to the mix, to increase flexibility? Would that simply reduce the intensity of the hues? I'm figuring these emulsions with lots of binders and not much pigment have to be used neat rather than being particularly dilutable - is that the case?

 

Indeed I believe the art department could draw a castle outline, although one of their members prides himself on getting students through GCSE Art without them having to be able to draw, so it might not necessarily look too much like a castle!

[ramdram]

You will probably have to experiment to find the ideal mix. Then subject it to the full force of your lighting rig to see if the colours are still as you want them. Paint additives are only a google away.

 

But somehow I can't see your audience walking out in droves just because the by now pastel shades are a bit cracked...after all you are only doing it for the Monet...

[schooltechie]

When I did my scenic painting module at university we had the joy of doing alice in wonderland. We used a large swipe cloth hand painted for the performance. It was all done with Rosco supersaturated paint, it comes in small pots (1litre I think) this has to be watered down! Because it's super saturated it stays the same shade as it is watered down to an extent. Not once in a 3 week run and a weeks dress/tech did it crack or crinkle. It was painted done with very watered down rosco and tied back in the wings when not in use. I can't remember what cloth we used but I would hazard a guess at just cheap calico.

 

Alex

[Ynot]

Sizing - on the odd occasion I've painted cloths we've used cheapish wallpaper size to bind the cloth to start wth - sometimes mixed in with the base coat of paint. The same can be done with flame retardent to an extent if your cloths aren't IFR.

 

I'm one who dislikes emulsions on cloths for all the reasons quoted - and we have some in house that have been painted by some of the amdrammers without any thought to the rigidity - some are indeed very thickly painted AND are often used on our swipe tracks and take up a hell of a lot of rom in the wings when pulled out and tied off. It also leads to a rather creased effect when pulled on stage.

 

So stick to the decent scenic paints if you can, and water down as much as you need to make it go furthest.

[paulears]

Whatever you do read the bit about the paint with the organic base. I didn't and my god the smell is gut wrenching if you let it go off. Like spilling milk but worse.