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CHAPTER EIGHT

Painting Lessons from a Virtuoso

HORACE ARMISTEAD, my first boss at Boston University, had been a fine designer and a brilliant scene painter. He advised that the lay-in (first coat) should be free and easy, just basic shapes and colors. Move and splash it freely; it’s just the lay-in. Then, when the lay-in dries, do the detailing (“cut it up”), and that’s also free and easy because the lay-in was so good. “Also,” he said, “don’t lose the drawing.” That meant don’t slosh over and hide the careful drawing on the drop. (This first cover-all is reminiscent of Roger Furse’s advice to me about doing a scene sketch in watercolor.)

During my Boston year, I also had the chance to work with George Lord. There were three scene painters in Boston, and two were named George Lord, though unrelated to each other. The third scene painter was “Burnt-Umber Charlie,” also called “Sepia Sam,” for the reason you can guess. He had a shop and rented scenery. “If the old stinker would paint more stuff, I could rent it,” said his son. “If that damn kid would rent stuff, I’d have enough money to paint more,” said the father. Pure Dickens.

The George Lord I assisted was an old man, but with a brush in his hand he was still a magician. He could dip one corner of a broad brush into dark green, the other corner into a lighter green, and with a rapid downward wiggle produce a tree, showing the sunny and shady sides of the leaves. Or, with different shades of green, dark shadow and moonlight. A few quick strokes and branches peered through. (We called the brushes he used “fitches,” supposedly named after the animal that donated the hair.)

George had a repertoire of four trees, although he could paint any others, or anything for that matter, given a sketch or a photo or a picture cut from magazine. His basic trees were a birch, a pine or fir, an oak or maple, and an apple tree. Using the same two-color dip, he could also paint a variety of moldings, such as the classic egg and dart, with amazing wrist-wiggling speed. Then, with a smaller brush, he added some dark shadows and, if needed, highlights — again, with dazzling speed. See John Singer Sargent for stunning highlights, he advised.

George told me that before the talking pictures, there were fifty acting companies in the larger Boston area. He had painted scenery for many of them, and also for a firm that rented out scenery. He showed me their catalog. You could rent a “center door, fancy” drop, add a couple of potted palms, and there was your hotel or mansion lobby. Or you could rent a kitchen: “Country kitchen, wallpaper; city kitchen, paint,” he said. There were dozens of landscapes and farmyards and terraces with awnings. He said that when you rented the sets for a show, if you chose to present one of the many plays in their files, they would also send along the scripts, perhaps full ones for the director and the stage manager, and “sides” for the actors. Sides were sheets given to each actor on which only his or her speeches were printed, with the cue lines preceding the speeches.

The marvelously painted backdrops might display painted chairs and tables so skillfully done that you might try to set down a package on them. The backdrops were lighted by strip lights, basically tin troughs with bulbs (or “lamps”) screwed in every six inches or so. These gave an overall stage illumination that hit the drops (and the actors) flat on, and this lighting aided the illusion created by the good painting. But with more individually focused spotlights on adjusted stage areas, a development led by my first adviser, Robert Edmond Jones, real chairs and real moldings were needed. Trompe l’oeil drops with their painted shadows didn’t seem to fool anyone any more — or to put it another way, we were no longer willing to be fooled.

I painted the ice for an ice show with George — big stars in red and blue, with outlines for the white stars. When we were done, the Zamboni covered our work with two layers of ice. We wore galoshes and kept our brushes moving. If you pause and your brush freezes to the ice, you end up glued there, idiotically yelling for hot water.

When I later came to New York, I painted at Chester Rakeman’s studio on West Forty-Seventh Street and at the Metropolitan Opera, then on Thirty-Eighth Street. Neither of these facilities had floor space, and we painted on sturdy counterweighted frames, which we could raise and lower. The canvas drops were tacked to them. This was not as fast as painting on the floor. The area available at any one time was only seven feet high; you couldn’t walk around on the drop and paint it anywhere; nor could you use some of the splashier techniques. Time was lost raising and lowering the frames. It was more difficult to snap the chalk lines that framed the squares that enabled you to enlarge a small sketch, with its small squares, to full size. At the Met, the two frames were far upstage, and a six-foot catwalk for the painters ran between them. The frames worked on the same rigging as the rest of the great overstage fly loft. If some joker raised both frames quickly at the same time, we were convinced we were falling and everyone screamed. On a positive note, while we worked, we heard wonderful music as the singers rehearsed.

WHAT I LEARNED

Painting stage scenery is a mix of speed and accuracy by fine painters as they enlarge the designer’s images from his renderings. Arnold Abramson, in New York, was a superb painter and skillful at managing his talented crew. I was never a fine painter, but I learned how to describe what I wanted, what to expect, how fast scenery can be painted, how different it looks in the studio from its appearance onstage, and how to criticize without hurting anyone’s feelings.

I learned some specific tricks, such as the way we can create a huge oval (say, thirty feet long) with a long piece of string, two nails, and a piece of charcoal. I learned that the fastest way to heat water is to plunge a live steam hose into a bucket of water. Later I saw that the well-equipped Imperial Theater in Tokyo had steam pockets downstage on both sides of the stage. Great for making dry ice mist quickly and abundantly.

George Lord told me that Thomas Rowlandson (1756–1827), a Brit best known for his satirical cartoons, was of help to him. “Look at his foliage,” George explained. “There is a background smear of color, showing the general outline of a tree or stand of trees. Then see how in some of these color blobs, he paints a cluster of leaves rather exactly, and the eye expands that exactness and you have the illusion of a large spread of exact leaves.”

George complained that directors and producers often saw his work before it was completed. “Never show a fool an unfinished work,” he barked. I thought of this years later when I saw ballet dancers wearing thick and untidy wool leg warmers, as if to say, “I’m in rehearsal, obviously. You won’t see these gorgeous limbs until I’m good and ready.” Lesson: Beware of letting a director or producer see incomplete or indecisive thinking. At least offer thinking that is on a secure road to somewhere he can travel with you. Much of theatre is an exposed art, and I feel sorry for actors as they slowly build a character, with the usual missteps, in front of others.

Do not use this in a somewhat reverse way: too quick, too soon. I once asked a prop man for a set of fine (reproduction) bone china and was handed plastic plates. The intention was to make me a prima donna if I didn’t accept them. That is where a friendly laugh is your ally. If you can’t laugh at errors, choose other work — although I cannot name a profession that is immune from this advice.

EXERCISE

You’ve probably seen a painter, seated at an easel, hold a pencil or brush at arm’s length to match the angle of a roofline or any angled object. Again, this is an exercise to improve your perception, not your knowledge. My students all profited by this, whether drawing a barn or a live model: angle of shoulders, hips, nipples (men have them too).