Scenic Cloths | Pantomime

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Shauna w. sleepy eyes

The last project of the Intro to Scenic Painting course was a real treat. We got to choose one of three designs by legendary theatre designer Alex McPherson to scale up into a section of pantomime backdrop. Alex has been working in theatre for nearly 70 years and used to be Head of Design at the Bristol Old Vic, so it was a real honour to work from one of his designs.

I chose the Haunted Forest, otherwise known as ‘Spooky Trees’. I thought it would be fun to draw without straight lines and the colour palette was striking, but in all honesty I was really excited about painting something gothic for once!

The best part about working with Alex, aside from his decades of experience and encyclopaedic knowledge of all things esoteric, is that he encourages to ‘put a bit of yourself’ into the work. For the haunted wood, this meant sourcing images of dreamcatchers and amulets, lanterns and all manner of pagan symbolism.

Panto cloths are built up as layers of washes, so we sketched in pencil, lined in sharpie and then started working over the design with diluted emulsion. The last day was spent black-lining with a brush (not with true black of course). I think we were all a bit taken aback when the lining started, because it completely changes the tone of the work. It was only when I trimmed the edges off at the end that I really understood the graphicness of panto design, without any distractions from the test patches.

With any luck I’ll be able to use Alex’s tricks painting panto this Autumn! In the meantime, there’s a two year boy in Ireland called Elijah, whose bedroom is about to get much spookier!

p.s. Alex and James have just released a stand-alone panto cloth painting course for Summer 2023. Details on the Scenic Painters website.