Monday, November 1, 2010

"Impression Sunrise" Costumes

{"Impression Sunrise" by Monet}

For Costume Design I class our assignment was to select and Impressionist painting and copy or square section of it with watercolor, and then to respond to that copy by creating two costume designs, one female and one male.

I was really happy with my copy of the original work. It was very difficult to translate an oil painting into watercolor. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a good image of it to share with you. It was hard enough to take photos of these renderings with my computer. Heh. At some point I'll photograph and add it.

I chose to create ballet costumes in response to the painting. Ultimately, I wasn't happy with the way the designs came out. I spent way more time on the painting copy and struggled with the male costume, not knowing what I wanted to capture. I don't really have any experience with designing dance costumes, so just researching mens ballet costumes was very enlightening. I would love to redo the assignment if I get time...but I'm not sure how likely that is in this crazy busy graduate program!


Very lightweight and delicate tulle skirt. Blue overlay with purple and light green layers underneath. The shoes would be much better in a nude color...I realized how much the dark shoes shorten the look of the leg as soon as I painted it on the page!
I'm still working on my watercolor techniques. We're encouraged to use all watercolor in class. But I've used some watercolor pencils here to get the shadowed areas. I'd love to get more shadowing in the hair and faces in the future. Learning!
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3 comments:

  1. Amazing, I would have done just about the same thing. I agree that the dance shoes would look better in nude, but what the heck, this is your first try in designing dance costumes (I am assuming here). I love the idea of layering the colors of tulle, on stage it would look very like the painting...congrats. Good job

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  2. Do you have access to a scanner? Delicate work like watercolours and drawings rarely show up well on photos. Like any medium, watercolour takes practice so keep on trying. To get the effect of shading you can try layering colours or mixing a darker shade by adding a small amount of complementary colour on your palette.

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  3. Audrey, thanks for your lovely comment! Hope you are doing well!

    Ingrid, thanks for the tips! Yes, I have a scanner and will eventually scan them, but I just thought that I could take a picture of them with my computer and get them up on the blog faster. :) I'll have to try the complementary color method of shading. I bet it works really well! Thanks!

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