The Front Page

Early on in my first lighting class (plainly called Lighting Design 1), we were assigned the task of taking a simple set rendering of The Front Page, xeroxed for our convenience, and make two light renderings for it. One using only white, the other in color. Simple enough. What light renderings are in my case are simply drawings to aid the director and other production staff of a performance in understanding what the lighting designer envisions for the stage. This is, of course, something I had never done given that, before college, the last art class I had taken was 8th grade (I believe I got a B or B-). The way I've learned to do light renderings is to simply take the set rendering, scan it, and print it out on some sort of black paper and then draw on that with colored pencils. It would be better if I used gouache, but I am even less skilled with paint than I am with a pencil. Regardless, light renderings are something I actually really enjoy doing. They just make more sense to me than drawing in the normal sense. When you draw normally, you're starting with a world full of bright, white light and adding shadow to that. This is, of course, the exact opposite of reality where light illuminates the darkness of the world. As a lighting designer whose purpose comes down to doing just that, I think it's understandable that I'd think that way.

As for the assignment, I was really happy with the results, given that it was my first ever attempt at doing such a thing. Although the rendering was from a design for The Front Page, the play didn't matter: it was just a set to use. As such, the actual "design" of our renderings was irrelevant. Really, the guest lecturer, David Finley, was looking for how well we could interpret the behavior of light. For my own purposes, the black and white rendering was a night time look, with a single desk of this office lit up by its own lamp. Most of the light comes from the bright moon outside, streaming in through the windows. I was very timid with this drawing, not wanting to make an overly obvious mistake. In his critique of my two works, Dave told me it was the more successful of the two, which I tend to agree with.

The Front Page - Black and White

The next rendering, the color one, is set in the early morning of the same night. Unlike some people in my class, I decided not to really "design" my renderings, rather, I chose the sources of light (morning sun, overhead lamps) and tried to show how it would actually look. The color is all a bit off, but I was still reasonably happy with it. Looking back at it now after growing an incredible amount (if I say so myself) as an artist, it's funny to look at the little mistakes made or even how I may have made it more difficult for myself by making it realistic.

The Front Page - Color

Things like this are why I love where I am right now. Even though I was up for God knows how long working on these two small drawings that weren't even supposed to be all that time-consuming, I was still happy to be doing it and to be learning. Any time that I've suffered or stressed here at Purchase, I can look back at these and remind myself that I'm doing something that I love.

It's nice, it really is.