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| Ageing | Making a newly built set look lived in. Bread and butter work for a scenic painter. |
| Backlighting | Lighting a cloth from behind makes it translucent. A backlit cloth will be seamless and painted without priming possibly in dye | |
| Batten | A length of 3” x 1” or 2” x 1” timber used to secure cloths before painting | |
| Battening Out | Attaching battens to a paint frame before stretching the cloth. | |
| Byte | A fold made in a cloth if it’s too big to go on a frame. This allows the cloth to be painted in two sections |
| Calico | A thin cotton fabric used for some scenic cloths | |
| Centre line | Line running down the centre of the stage from which measurements can be taken. Cloths are marked out from a centre line so that if the cloth is slightly the wrong size then the image still stays centre stage. | |
| Charcoal stick | A bamboo cane adapted to take a stick of charcoal or a fitch. | |
| Cotton Sheeting | Bleached Calico | |
| Cutting In | Painting up to a hard edge, around a door frame for example or a shape in a graphic backdrop design. |
| De-Nibbing | Sanding the gritty bits off a sealed or primed surface to make it smooth. | |
| Dragging | Moving a brush through a glaze. Used a lot in wood graining | |
| Drop | The height of a cloth | |
| Dry Brushing | Passing a brush with little paint in it, over the surface of a piece of scenery or cloth. This technique is useful to reveal texture on the surface of a piece of scenery. |
| Ferrule | A band of metal, often copper that holds a brushe's bristles in place | |
| Filled Cloth | A gauze like material used for scenic cloths. The weave is denser than a gauze so that it will not become transparent once backlit. | |
| Fire Proofing | Scenic Cloths and scenery have to conform to fire regulations. Scenic materials are chemically treated with flame retardants so that they conform to fire regulations. | |
| Fitch | Scenic paintbrushes used for detailed cloth painting. | |
| Flogging | There are two types of floggers. One is a home made tool for correcting drawings, the other is a brush used to move glaze that has been dragged. |
| Gauze | A fabric woven in an open rectangular weave. When lit from the front, cloths made from gauze appear solid. When backlit they disappear. | |
| Graining | Creating fake wood grain. | |
| Gridding Up | The process of creating a scaled grid on both design and scenic item so that the drawing can be transferred from one to the other. |
| Holidays | Dry brushed patches in priming where the painters has “missed a bit” These can make subsequent painting look very patchy. |
| Laying In | Second layer of paint on a piece of scenery. The application of base coats |
| Marking Out | Drawing out a design, often in charcoal, on the item of scenery |
| Nap | Fluff found on the surface of cloth |
| Over Graining | A second layer of graining process that makes the effect more realistic | |
| Over-Spray. | Atomised paint ending up where it’s not wanted during spray painting. |
| Paint Frame | A framework used to paint a cloth upright. Paint frames were built at the back of theatre stages or in separate purpose built buildings. Not many survive. They fall into two groups, those where the painter stands on a mezzanine floor and the cloth moves up and down, and those where the painter stands on a moveable bridge which moves up and down a static cloth. | |
| A fold of material running along the bottom of a backcloth into which a piece of conduit can be inserted to weigh the cloth down | ||
| Priming | First layer of paint on a piece of scenery |
| Scaling | The process of enlarging a drawing from design to scenery | |
| Scenic Canvas | Fireproofed canvas used to make backdrops. It comes in a variety of grades and widths and is made from flax or more often cotton. | |
| Scenic Compasses | A variety of gizmos for drawing circles on cloths. Most can be home made. | |
| Sealing | Sealing some absorbent or fireproofed substrates to make them easier to paint. | |
| Softening | Moving glaze around with a very soft brush, sometimes made with badger hair. This is used in marbling techniques | |
| Straight Edge | As it sounds, a scenic ruler. Can be made for floor or frame painters and is used to paint or draw straight lines |
| Ties | Cloth ribbons sewn into the top of a cloth, along the webbing used to tie the cloth to a bar. |