They Were Off My Path

Lynn snuck a photo of me while I was measuring out a circle on the floor.
Photo courtesy of Washburn Theatre Department

So after coming to terms with the fact that I didn't get cast (and realizing I hadn't posted anything on here in over a week) I talked to Tony Naylor, the scenographer and set designer for the theatre department. He agreed to let me help paint the set. What I didn't expect was that he would let me choose what the floor would look like (Well, he had a design chosen but I got to choose how it laid on the floor), and be in charge of getting it painted!

It was a bigger challenge than I expected. I've taken the set design class, but it's a whole different ball game to actually apply the knowledge. Everything has to be measured out in scale on the small picture so that it can be applied to the real floor. For example, if I wanted to paint this on a wall:

Photo courtesy of stock exchange images

I first have to determine how big I want them. If my wall is eight feet long by seven feet high, and I want the squares to cover the whole thing (without the reflection) I have to count how many squares there are, measure them in scale and then calculate how many will fit.

For the show, I was working in 1/4" scale which means that 1/4" = 1'. so if a circle on my template is two inches across, it would be eight feet across in real life.

Here's a scale table I made in my set design class in quarter inch scale.

This table is made in quarter inch scale. If it were real it would be 7'x3'x4'.
Photo by Jamie Schartz

If it were a real table, it would be 7 feet long by 3 feet wide by 4 feet tall.