Technique: toning costumes for higher stage contrast

[labricoleuse]

One technique that a painter/dyer can employ to subtly improve the look of stage costumes is called toning, painting into the garment or piece to increase the contrast and value, to enhance its contours and make it "punch" under stage lights. Often, lighting will flatten textural elements but judicious toning can counterbalance that.



Wayback ages ago, i wrote about some livery wigs in our stock, made from roving. To illustrate how toning works, here's a comparison: the wig on the left is left natural, whereas the wig on the right has been toned:


side view


back view

For this specific instance, i used a Preval aerosol sprayer to apply watered-down acrylic to the wig to enhance the appearance of the rolls of hair. I chose this because i had an extremely quick turnaround time and i had the Preval with paint in the chamber at-hand already. In an ideal universe, i probably would have instead chosen to employ the airbrush, but i had to tone this ASAP and put it in front of a fan as it was. (This wig is worn by Salieri's Valet in the 1830s scenes in our current production of Amadeus.)

Comments

[lisotchka.livejournal.com]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

[sarcasm-hime.livejournal.com]

Neat! I'm a firm believer in creating artificial highlights and shadows but didn't know you could do it on wigs as well!

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

Admittedly i have not tried it on traditional wigs of the human or acrylic hair variety. This one is made of wool roving, so it's kind of like painting cottonballs.

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

a talented friend of mine has been experimenting with needle felting to make little animals, and has done some great stuff with felting various colored rovings together. Is this a technique with which you are familiar?

[labricoleuse.livejournal.com]

Needle felting is something i'm familiar with in passing, from doing research on fulling knitted pieces (which often gets called "felting" though that's apparently technically incorrect). It sounds interesting, but it seems like it's too time-consuming for the size of the output to be applicable in my field. I'd still love to see pix of your friend's work!

[alisgray.livejournal.com]

Bonnie's stuff uses one needle at a time, though evidently there are tools which involve many needles together which are much faster. I'll see if we have some good shots of her poppets.

Thanks as always for your blogging. It's inspirational.