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Making graffiti

posted by Karen McKevitt on Wed, Jun 6, 2012
in Our shows , Scene shop

By Lisa Lazar, charge scenic artist

Greetings from the Berkeley Rep Scenic Art studio!

Today we answer the question: How might one paint a graffiti-covered corrugated roll-up door for Emotional Creature? How might one paint this on a non-corrugated floor?

The image is drawn on a huge sheet of paper and then transferred to the flooring material. Drawing on the paper allows the artists to work out the drawing without damaging the actual scenery.

Once the image is transferred, the artists start painting.  All the colors are custom-mixed to match the designer’s specifications. In the above photo, Scenic Art Fellow Anya Kazimierski is painting with a color she mixed to match the designer’s scale rendering. You can see a blue crescent on a white board at the top of the photograph. That is what the artists are working to replicate.

Once the graffiti portion of the painting is completed, the next step is to add the illusion of corrugation. Here, Anya is marking the lines that will become the next layer of this painting.

All of the lines are airbrushed on with a spray gun made for painting automobiles. The spray gun gives a smooth, photographic quality to the painting, but because there is the risk of unwanted “over-spray,” this technique requires extensive masking.  

And here you have it! One custom-shaped handpainted graffiti-coved roll-up door…on the floor.