My Checkered Artistic Past

From time to time I've mentioned that I was a Costume Designer way back in my younger days.
Back before kids.
Back in the Prehistoric days of my youth, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

A few weeks ago, while I was cleaning some things out of the garage in preparation for one of the Stockpile/Garage Sales, I came across some sketches from my old portfolio from college.

Since I have nothing else worthwhile to blog about today and I have a feeling nobody actually believes half of what I say here, you get to see these stunning works of art *cough*.

Though it may appear to be a simple job, a costume designer has to wear many hats and have many skills.
First you have to create a vision or rather bring the artistic vision of the director of the play to life via clothing.  You must create a cohesive design for all the garments in the play.

Then you have to draw or otherwise put to paper this design.
Not only do you have to convey the design in a 2 dimensional medium, but you have to locate fabrics and trimmings appropriate to turn your design concept into an actual garment that can be worn.
A costume rendering not only is a work of art but it is first and foremost a working tool.
It gives voice to the vision and serves as a guide to the seamstresses as they set about bringing the design to life as an honest to goodness garment.

It's great if a costume designer is a very good artist, but designing clothing that works well on actors is a designers most important skill.
It's a job that you learn from the ground up.  Nobody falls out of the sky and  becomes a costume designer without first learning how to sew, make and cut a pattern, fit a garment and all those non-designing skills.  It's a very hands on profession.  The nitty gritty skills you learn on your way up to being a designer makes you a better designer.

And because of a lack of time, a costume designer generally has little time to create renderings of the costumes.  Usually it's a very quick pencil drawing with some splashes of color thrown onto the paper.
Having the luxury of the time to create proper costume renderings is only a dream to all but the most successful and well paid designers.  And once you rise to that level a good portion of designers don't even do their own renderings.....that's what your paid flunky assistants are for. ;-)

Let me say that most struggling costume designers are also magicians sometimes, having to make expensive looking clothing on a shoestring budget.  Unless you are designing for top film or tv companies, you never have an adequate amount of cash for supplies.  College departments give you bare bones budgets, professional shops give you a pittance and if you work for a shop that uses Equity actors(unionized), then all their production budget goes to paying their salaries and the non-unionized production staff gets screwed.

But enough of that for now.
Onward to the sketch.....

This 1st rendering is for a character in a short play by Anton Chekov(very Russian and very turn of the century, Victorian era).
I used pastels on colored paper to render this sketch.
The blob on the left top are the swatches of the fabrics used to construct this costume, including an example of  'jewels' I handmade to embellish the front of the overlay of the skirt. Money for profession jewels made with Swarovski crystals?  Not in this budget!lol

Here is another costume sketch for a Molière play.  The clothing is apropos to French society of 1670's, the Baroque era.
I created this sketch in watercolors on watercolor paper.

Here is another rendering for another show I can't recall by whom at the moment.  The setting is Ancient Greece.
Again it is rendered in watercolors.

And here's another sketch for the same Molière play as before.....

This last sketch is dear to my heart because it is of ME.
Yes, not only did I design the costumes of this show and build a lot of them, I was also a major character in this production.

I apologize that my photos aren't so great and you can't see much of the detail that is in them.
I could talk for days about the techniques employed to give texture to both the drawings and the actual costumes, because, well, this is my first love.

Now I need to locate the photos of the actual costumes from these renderings, so I can show you how they looked on actual actors.lol

Sluggy