Shy Wolf Studio: E&T

E&T Backdrop - Part 3

Hooray again! We're done!

Well....not really. I was under the impression we were not going to do the sun chariot in the center of the zodiac and just leave it as a pretty sun with rays extending out. Nope.

Clarice and I buckled down and tag teamed the most complicated part of the backdrop.

Finished sun chariot.

The finished product, both canvases.

And here it is, in all of it's glory with two people I am incredibly proud to call my friends front and center. It really did made a damn impressive piece.

Total hours clocked by me: ~40+
Total hours clocked by Clarice: ~30+

Thank you for everyone who came to help, keep up company, offer words of encouragement, and in general were awesome through the entire project. Kudos to Anton for an amazing idea, but next time I'd like more lead time. ;)

Photo credit: David Holland

E&T Backdrop - Part 2

Hooray! After a week or working a few hours a night, the top was complete!!! The middle had a big yellow sun added and Anton mentioned that he was going on a business trip.

And then the second canvas drop cloth came out.

Turns out, we were doing the other half of the illumination. The idea was to do the trees and grass and then Edward and Thyra sitting on their thrones would be the focal point of the "picture" we were creating.

Oooookay......

Time to break out the big guns. Clarice got a bunch of people to help paint trees on that Sunday (among them Darerca and her family). By Monday and Tuesday, we enlisted Simona, Caitriona, and Mathias to pretend to be Bob Ross and paint some happy little trees (and some big swaths of grass).

Paints for this were samples from Lowe's (same as the calendar half). We used a bit of poetic license to make the trees doable and give them some definition. Still more to come....

E&T Backdrop - Part 1

This next project can only be described as "epic". So very epic, it's being broken down into multiple posts.

A project was underway for the coronation of Edward III and Thyra II to add some shtick to their elevation. For their second reign together, the oracles that predicted the end of the world (and the end of their reign) neglected to see that there was a page stuck to the back of their prophecy. This "new" page predicted that they would indeed reign again for thousands and hundreds of ....hours (basically the duration of the normal Eastern reign of six months).

Master Anton has a lovely idea for props and shtick this time based off of the Duc de Berry "Tres Riches Heures" and incorporated the theme of the zodiac to go with the prophecy.

The inspiration for the coronation back drop.

I got a call from Thyra about two weeks before coronation asking me if I'd be willing to do some sketches for the zodiac signs of the reign. I gleefully said yes, with the caveat that I sucked at drawing people. Good news - I only had to draw one person (Aquarius). Sure. No problem. We were only going to do the top part of the picture (the zodiac calendar). Anton was going to handle the calligraphy painting of the months and days of all the royal progress events. We were after all essentially making an accurate East Kingdom calendar for the reign.

Somehow I convinced Clarice della Luna to give me a hand painting some of the zodiac figures once I had finished the sketching. I don't think either of us were prepared for what we were really doing.

Please note, Clarice is slightly taller than I am (I'm 5'2"). She's shown below for scale. All the zodiac symbols were free-handed with pencil. There are some heavy sketch lines that were erased and painted over. Some figures were a "choose your adventure" with which guidelines to use.