Four Simple Marking Out Tools
This article looks at how to make four simple tools to help you mark out a backcloth. They are easy and cheap to make, and make life a lot easier when you are drawing out your design on a cloth.
A Charcoal Stick
A charcoal stick is simply a length of bamboo about 3’ long. Carefully split the end of the cane into four quarters. This allows you to insert a stick of charcoal. Now take a thick rubber band and wind it around the end of the cane a few times. The cane will now grip the charcoal when inserted. I’ve finished mine off with a string grip at the other end, with a loop included so that I can hang the stick up. A charcoal stick is used mostly by floor painters as a way of marking out without getting on hands and knees. It’s much easier to see what you are doing if you are standing up away from the drawing. As well as charcoal a stick like this will take a scenic fitch such as a Rosco liner.
A Straight Edge
A straight edge is needed to draw and paint straight lines. For ease of use it shouldn’t be too heavy or too long. I would choose a length between 4’ and 5’ (1.2m and 1.5m). Using a piece of moulding to make your straight edge is a good idea. This helps when you are using it to paint straight lines because the bit of the straight edge that touches the brush is always held away from the cloth itself. This reduces the chance of nasty looking splodges. You’ll need a handle in the middle of the straight edge and this can be offset so that your “holding” hand doesn’t get in the way of the brush. You’ll see from this photo that I had to play about with the handle, lifting it further from the straight edge to make it comfortable to use.
For floor painters, a straight edge on a stick is used in conjunction with a charcoal stick.
This time I used a piece of 3” x 1” but spaced it off the ground with little blocks at the end of the straight edge. Again the handle is off set to keep out of the way of sticks and brushes
A Compass
Two pieces of wood bolted together at one end. (Use plenty of washers so that the compass can be used without undoing the nut.) I drilled holes in the ends of both these pieces of wood before bolting them together. At one end I put a nail, pointy end sticking out, and sealed that into place with a two-part adhesive. (Araldite would be fine) On the other end I glued a charcoal stick. Drilling the holes is a bit tricky and I’d advise using a vice or “workmate” type bench to make life easier. Again I’ve added a loop to hang it up. I can draw circles over six feet (or 2m) with mine. I’ve used oak but any wood will do, in fact oak just makes it heavy.
A Flogger
This is just a length of wood and a piece of canvas. Your wooden handle should be about 16” (40cm) long and your piece of canvas about 20” (50cm) square. With a pair of scissors, make little cuts every 1 1/2” ( 4cm ). Now rip across the cloth but stop short of the other side by 4” (10cm)
Now we need to attach the cloth to the handle. Place the handle on the unripped side of the cloth as shown in the drawing and attach one end with a staple or pin. Now roll the cloth onto the handle and staple the other end into the handle.
Marking Out
Transferring the drawing from design to cloth
Get The Design Right.
The starting point for painting any cloth is the design. As scenic artists we rely on the design for the information that we need. Even if you are the designer as well as the scenic painter, get the design right first. It’s so much easier to make something work visually on a piece of card the size of a shoe box, than on a cloth the size of a lorry. Most theatre models are built in a scale of 1:25 ( 4 cm to a metre ) or 1:24 (1/2” to the foot). For the purposes of this article I’ll stick to metric.
Using a Scale Ruler
For those not used to working in scale, this can be confusing at first, but actually it’s very simple. If we are working in 1:25, then the model will be 25 times smaller than the real thing. To transfer a measurement from the model to the cloth or piece of scenery simply multiply by 25. 1 cm on the model becomes 25 cm on the cloth. To save a lot of tedious sums we use a scale rule.
You can buy a 1:25 scale rule from most stationers. The ruler is marked off into metres, 25 times smaller, so that in reality each metre on the ruler is 4 cm long. The ruler has 7.5 one metre units marked out on it. Each metre unit is divided into 10 main subdivisions (representing 10 cm each) and each subdivision is further divided into 5 (representing 2 cm each)
Now that we have a stretched and primed cloth ready to go, the first job is to grid up both design and cloth. Working with a grid makes the drawing process easier. Drawing out a design that’s 6m x 12m is daunting but drawing one metre square seems more straight forward. If we put a one metre grid on the design and the same one metre grid on the cloth, then the drawing can be transfered, one square at a time.
The trick is to make sure that you get the grids right. To do this you have to follow the same method with both design and cloth.
Gridding Up The Design and Backcloth
- Cover the design in thin plastic to protect it.
- Measure the width of the design and draw a centre line onto the plastic.
- Now measure off from the centre line along the top and bottom edge of the design marking every metre to the left and then the right. Join the marks to form the vertical lines. Be as accurate as you can, as even a small inaccuracy magnified 25 times is going to throw you out.
- Now for the horizontal lines. Start from the bottom edge of the design and mark up the sides every metre using the scale rule. Join the marks to form the horizontal lines and complete the grid. You may need to mark the centreline as well if the cloth is more than 7.5m wide. That’s the design gridded.
Now The Cloth
- Now we need to grid the cloth. Instead of marking the cloth itself we are going to create a string grid which can be removed and put back at any point during the painting of the cloth. Start as before by finding the centre line. Mark the centre of the top and bottom edges of the cloth by nailing a 1” nail about a third of the way. Now measure along the top and bottom edges, to the left then to the right inserting a nail every metre.
- Now we need the horizontal strings marked out. As before with the design, measure up the sides of the cloth marking then nailing every metre. Remember to start at the bottom and work to the top not the other way around. It won’t matter if your cloth has a drop of say 6m exactly but if it’s 6.2m you’ll be 20 cm out when you come to transfer the drawing.
- Lastly you can now get a large ball of string and take it for a walk around the cloth joining up all the nails.
The principle is the same if you are working on the floor or a frame
Marking Out the Backcloth
Drawing or marking out, should be done in charcoal. It’s important to mark out very lightly. Almost every painter when they start off marking out a cloth for the first time makes marks that are too dark. Some people start off drawing lightly and then make a mistake. Then they make a darker mark to cover up the mistake. Before you know where you are the cloth is covered in dark charcoal marks that are really difficult to get off.
As well as the gridded design, the gridded cloth and a piece of charcoal, you should be armed with a flogger! A flogger is a simple home made tool, a bit like a cat ‘o’ nine tails made of canvas. If you make a mistake and have drawn lightly you can strike the cloth with the tip of the flogger and the drawing will disappear. Draw too strongly and you’re stuck with the mistake.
Start at the top or bottom of the cloth and methodically transfer the drawing, square by square. By the time you get into the middle of the cloth it can be a bit confusing and you might forget which square you are in, especially if it’s a big cloth. You can label both grids to help you find your way.
As you draw out your design on to the cloth, think about the painting process. The next stage is “laying in” the base coat colours; getting the basic shapes and colours in the right places. There’s no point in doing detailed drawing if your “lay in” is going to cover up your detailed drawing, so to start with keep the drawing fairly basic. When you’ve finished your first level of drawing, wind the string grid back up into a ball but leave the grid nails in place. You can now lay in your base coats. When the base coats are dry you may need to add more detailed drawing. If you need to you can put the grid back again.
How you proceed from here will depend very much on the design that you are working from. There will be a number of cloth painting workshops published on the Scenic Painters website over the next few months as well as other information covering many aspects of scenery painting. If you’d like more information about the Scenic Painters site please follow this link to our newsletter sign up page.
Stretching and Priming a Cloth
Where do you get the cloth?
There are a number of cloth makers around the country. They offer a range of different materials including cotton sheeting, canvas, gauze (or scrim) and filled cloth. They all have different uses. Let’s assume that you need a basic scenic canvas. The cloth maker will want to know how you want the cloth finished. The conventional set up is to have ties at the top, in order to tie the cloth onto the fly bar, hems down the sides and a pocket in the bottom, in order to weight the bottom of the cloth with a length of conduit. You can of course make up your own cloth but if you do so remember that you need fire retardant canvas. I’m afraid that I’m no seamster and so can’t give any instructions on making a cloth.
Battening out
Now we have to stretch the cloth out. The principle is the same whether you are on the floor or on a frame. The cloth needs to be stretched out to the right size, so that it is square and secure
How to batten out a cloth on a frame.
If you have a great big clean flat space to lay the new cloth out in, lay it out and measure it. Cloth makers don’t always get it right so if you can, you should check. If not just go ahead and batten out to the dimensions that the cloth ought to be and we’ll adjust later on
- First we need to get the top batten in the right place. (Everything else follows on from that). The batten must be as long or longer than the width of the cloth. You can use two lengths of batten if you need to as long as they line up to form one continuous straight line once secured. You can use a block to join them. The top batten should be attached to the frame or the batten blocks, high enough to accommodate the height, (or “drop”) of the cloth plus another 50 cm. This is just to make painting the bottom of the cloth more comfortable so if you haven’t got the extra height you’ll have to bend more when painting!
- Having got the top batten in place, mark the width of the cloth on it and tap a nail 1/3rd of the way into the batten, on your marks. From these two nails hang plumb lines. These lines will tell you where the bottom batten starts and finishes.
- Now measure down from the top edge of the higher batten and measure the drop of the cloth and make a mark on your batten blocks or your frame.
- Now attach your bottom batten to the frame or blocks, aligning the top edge of your batten with these marks.
- The last stage is to add the vertical battens. These can be screwed to the horizontal battens and the batten blocks. Space them so that the plumb lines would run down the middle of each batten.
- Now when we come to attach the cloth to the frame you should be able to use the middle of each batten as a line to stretch the cloth to.
Stretching The Cloths
Now we have the battens in the right place, we need to stretch the top edge of the cloth onto the top batten. Before doing this, ping a chalk line through the middle of the top and bottom battens. Now start nailing the top edge of the cloth along the chalk line on the top batten, starting at one plumb line and finishing at the other. Don’t pull the edge of the cloth too tight. Use 1” nails and only nail them in 1/3rd of the way. Space the nails every 50cm to start with
Now pin the bottom corners of the cloth into place. With a bit of luck the tension will be just right, if the cloth is the right size. The sides and bottom of the cloth may be scolloped in but the corners should go in the right place with little persuasion. If you weren’t able to measure the cloth to start with and the cloth is the wrong size now is the time to move the battens.
Now to continue stretching the cloth, pin the middle of the bottom edge and the middle of the vertical edges. (There’s no need to measure, roughly the middle is fine). Our cloth edges are now divided into two. Now divide them again in four then eight and so on until you have nails about every 50 cm.
(The reason for this halving procedure is to make the stretching of the cloth even. The top edge that we nailed first, has webbing on it so it’s not that stretchy, but the bottom and side edges don’t have webbing. If you start at one end, pull the cloth too hard, and work along the cloth putting nails in every 15 cm, you will stretch the cloth out of shape so that it’s the wrong size and not square.)
Now that you have the cloth stretched with nails every 50 cm, work your way around the cloth dividing each 50cm gap into 3.
What about floor painters?
Pinning out a cloth on the floor is much more straight forward. In the article “Creating a backdrop painting space” I describe how to make a floating floor that you can nail a cloth to. No battens are needed but the cloth still needs to be square.
- Lay the floating floor over a tarpaulin to contain any mess.
- Prepare the floor, if it’s been used before, by running a scraper over it to get any lumps and bumps off. If you don’t have a floor scraper a garden spade or shovel will do.
- Sweep the floor a couple of times.
- Unpack the cloth and check the measurements.
- Mark out a string box on the floor the same size as the cloth with a nail in each corner and string wrapped around the edge. Check the diagonal measurements between corners. If the measurements are the same then you have got it square
- Now pin the cloth out in the same way as if you were using a frame. Top first, then corners, then keep halving and lastly fill in.
Priming
Most cloths are primed. There are some exceptions, a backlit cloth for instance, but for most cloths it’s essential. The priming seals the fibres of the fabric so that when you apply scene paint the colour stays on the outside of the fibres where you want it. If the priming isn’t there, the colours will dry back as the scenic paint is absorbed into the fibres of the cloth. The result is pale and wishy-washy and you’ll end up having to paint it again.
At my studio we prime with Rosco white base, tinted sometimes depending on the image. This paint isn’t cheap but it is much better than emulsion as the cloth stays more flexible. (White base is much cheaper than other scenic paints and you can buy it in 10 ltr tubs.) If you can’t run to Rosco, use emulsion. Either way get the paint to the consistency of slightly watery single cream. The prime coat should be applied with a 5” or 6” paint brush and worked into the weave of the cloth filling it. On no account should you use a roller to prime. The cloth will end up as stiff as cardboard.
Dry brushing over the weave will create “holidays”, patches of bad priming where the next paint layer will dry back. Make sure that you avoid this. Once painted the prime coat should be allowed to dry properly. Those working on the floor should make sure that their prime coat is absolutely dry before walking on it again. Walking on a damp cloth can squeeze the fire proofing salts from the weave of the cloth into the paint layer. They will then come through many successive layers of paint! Get the prime right the first time and they are locked away for good.
Creating a Backcloth Painting Space
Creating a Backcloth Painting Space.
Is it worth it?
Setting up a cloth painting space is not something you can do in five minutes. It takes some thought and planning, and you will have to invest some money for materials and some time, but it can be worth it in the long run. The backdrop hire company will be unlikely to have exactly what you are looking for, the right size for your space and just the right image. Hire cloths can be well painted, but a lot are rather average and some are just plain awful. They can also look quite dog eared with patches and repairs. Your own backdrop can be home made and painted several times saving several hiring and shipping charges. This article looks at a couple of options for creating a cloth painting space, and is the first of three articles looking at cloth painting for amdram companies.
What do you need?
In order to paint a cloth it needs to be stretched taught. This stops it flapping around making it impossible to paint. It needs to be stretched to the right shape. An unpainted cloth is quite elastic and can be stretched out of shape for ever. Once painted it’s stuck in the wrong shape. Finally it needs to held securely. Cloths shrink when they are primed and this exerts great force on what ever the cloth is attached to.
Floor or Frame
There are two methods of holding the cloth securely. It must either be nailed to a wooden floor or to a wooden frame (or paint frame) attached to a wall. In most countries cloths are painted on the floor. In Britain paint frames have been the preferred solution for professional scenery painters. However if you are starting from scratch, here’s a look at the pro’s and con’s of each.
Space
Floor painting takes up space. A cloth might take several weekends to paint, two at the very least if it is a new cloth. If you are going to leave a cloth down on the floor, (and it’s a lot of hassle taking it up and stretching it out again,) then the whole exercise is going to tie up space. A frame just needs a wall that’s big enough to accommodate a cloth the right size for your performance space. This could be in a barn, a warehouse or store. You will need enough space to move ladders or preferably a scaffolding tower in front of the cloth but when you are finished for the day, you can clear away and not be taking up any space.
Access
Talk of scaffolding brings us to access equipment. Here the floor is a winner as you don’t need any. Once the cloth is laid out you can walk on it to get to the bit you need to paint. Clean shoes with flat soles, ( old deck shoes are ideal,) will mean that you leave no trace, and you can always put down pathways of paper or plastic if you need to. To paint on a frame you will need a frame ladder or a scaffold tower. A tower is much better as you will have room for paint pots and can stand in comfort. You can have one painter working at ground level and another painter on the tower painting the top of the cloth.
Comfort
Painting on the floor involves a lot of hands and knees work and a lot of bending. Working on a frame, especially an improvised or homemade frame, involves a lot of clambering about on ladders and towers. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Painting
There are things that you can do more easily when painting on the floor and some things that work better on a frame. Gravity is with you on the floor. Paint stays put so you can use washes more easily. Working on the frame is great for detailed work. The point is that both methods work, and you will find ways to achieve the look that you are after, whether you are working up or down.
Making a Floating Floor
Most people will not have access to a wooden floored workshop space, so to work on the floor you will need to make a floating floor that can be laid out and then packed away again. For a 12’ x 20’ cloth this would require 7 1/2 sheets of 18mm shuttering ply. Each sheet of ply needs a batten running all the way around the edge and three running through the middle. You are effectively dividing an 8’ x 4’ shape into 4 x (2’x4’) shapes. The battens will need to be offset so that all the sheets of ply interlock. The boards don’t have to be pretty so you might be able to recycle or find some second hand ones, but they do need to be flat. A floating floor like this can be laid on a tarpaulin so as to keep the mess of painting contained, and will go in a transit van, so could be shared between companies within an area.
Making a simple Paint Frame
This might be a cheaper option. Effectively what you need is a frame of 3” x 1” battening attached to something solid like a brick wall. The cheapest solution is to attach the battens to the wall using blocks of 3” x 2” timber about 12” long. The blocks should be screwed to the wall using suitable fixings. They need to be very secure as the cloth will put them under stress when it shrinks (during priming). You don’t want the frame falling to pieces at this stage. Put a block every four feet or so and attach them at ninety degrees to the direction of the batten. This way you get more flexibility when levelling your battens.
The down side with this approach is that you have to add more blocks every time you want to move the battens to accommodate a different sized cloth. An upgraded design is to make a series of wooden frames that screw to the wall permanently. You can then attach battens to the frames. Another upgrade is to have a beam on pulleys that forms the top batten of your frame. When the cloth is finished you can release it from the frame along the sides and bottom and then lower the top batten folding the cloth as you lower it in a corrugated fashion. This makes folding the cloth up much easier.
