design

Crop Circles Photographs: Steve Alexander

Posted by hil

MilkhillIts crop circle season in England now; well, from May right through to September. Many of the beautiful photographs of crop circles, such as the one here at Milk Hill, are taken by Steve Alexander. At his site, temporarytemples, you can see images of the latest circles as they appear, as well browse back through the library of images from previous years.

There is an ongoing debate about whether the circles are man-made or paranormal. Steve writes about his feeling that some UFOs are living organisms, (native to our atmosphere but in a different reality that we might not usually be able to see), rather than pure nuts-and-bolts craft. His belief that there ‘is connection between the crop circles, the people who are drawn to the
crop circles, and the bio-forms that inhabit the crop circle locations’ is far more attractive than the ‘planks and ropes v. aliens’ argument you usually hear.

The circlemakers have an interesting site too. They track crop circle patterns as well as making some on contract. Here, for example, is a Hello Kitty pattern.

(Image reproduced with permission. Thanks, Steve)

Japanese Manhole Cover Patterns

Posted by hil

Manhole_Cover_Hiroshima_08.thumb
Frangipani has a gallery of some beautiful manhole covers in Japan. Some of them are very colourful.

Updated 2015: links broken, but google them :)

Stencilling Carpet

Posted by hil

My husband’s grandfather had a wide notion of what might be fixed with paint, and it got more extensive as he got older, until he was happily fixing stains in upholstery and carpets with dabs of paint. I’ve been thinking about him today, because I have been spraypainting a border pattern onto a large piece of carpet which is to be used in a play. The design was cut as a stencil:

Stencil design

Stencil cutting

Hidden Corners Theatre: See Beneath

Posted by hil

The bunraku-style puppets I was working on are for production called ‘See Beneath’, being presented by Hidden Corners Theatre, Canberra’s award-winning theatre company of young carers. This is how the puppets turned out:

Sea Captain

 

‘See Beneath’ is a play by and about young people dealing with disability in their families, directed by Robin Davidson and barb barnett, with the assistance of Max Barker. Its written by Rebecca Meston and the cast of Hidden Corners, and plays in Melbourne and Canberra during July. Here are season details:Melbourne: Theatreworks, 14 Acland St, St. Kilda.

13 – 16 July, Wed – Sat @ 7.30pm; Sat matinee @ 2pmCanberra: The Street Theatre Studio, Childers St, Civic
21 – 23 July, Thurs – Sat @ 7.30pm; Sat matinee @ 2pm

Tickets are $8 concession, $14 full.

Foam construction puppet tutorial at Bear Town

Posted by hil

I’ve been enjoying PuppetVision Blog for a while now. Based in Toronto, Canada, it casts its net much wider, and looks at video and film puppetry.

PuppetVision’s blogger, Andrew, is also creating Bear Town, a web-based puppetry project. Part of the ‘behind the scenes’ information there is a step-by-step series of articles documenting the making of Tumbles B.Bear. There’s a useful tutorial about a soft foam puppet construction method nicknamed ‘the wedge method’, (free pattern) where a series of wedges is used to a make hollow ball of varying shape, as well as information about how Tumbles’ arms, hands and mouth are made.

Updated 2015: some links broken, some renewed

Rough cut bunraku puppets

Posted by hil

I’m making some bunraku-style puppets at the moment. They are about 60cm tall. I’ve just got to the stage where they are more-or-less complete in construction and movement, but still rough in finish. This is a stage I love – there is something very aesthetically pleasing about it – and I think it would be really interesting to use them unfinished in a play. I always almost regret having to finish them.

Bunraku-style puppets-3

They are moving really nicely:

Bunraku-style puppets-1

A few other pics of them below: the woman, the man, bending. Now I have to paint their faces, forearms and hands and the woman’s leg and foot; and dress them.

Making of Nature Band Parade Puppets

Posted by hil

Over at Puppetry Australia, Sean Manners has put together a pictorial account of the building of the parade puppets for Nature Band, a community puppet project that ran as part of the One Van Puppetry Festival earlier in the year, held in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains out of Sydney. The puppets, five yellow-tailed black cockatoos, four trees and three
waratahs, were made by participants in community workshops that were held over several months.

‘The puppets were initially designed by Jenny Kee; realized by Paula Martin, a local designer and sculptor; the workshops were facilitated by Sean Manners, puppeteer and community artist; and the performance and project as a whole was directed and choreographed by Sue Wallace of Sydney Puppet Theatre.’

The Victory Theatre Cafe and Antique Centre in Blackheath has a cool community mural along one side, that surely must also have been designed by Kenny Kee:

There is also a bus shelter on the edge of Blackheath that I liked because it has been painted to celebrate the puppetry festival (click on the thumbnails for larger images):

'One Van' Bus stop mural
'One Van' Bus stop mural

I heard the distinctive yellow-tailed black cockatoo calls when I was in Blackheath. They are wonderful birds, quite big – about 60cm – and I always feel its a good omen when they are about, though their calls are somewhat plaintive. In Canberra it used to be quite rare to see these cockatoos, but since the devastating bushfires in January 2003 they have moved into the suburbs. A few weeks ago, we had the first ones in our garden. They spent several hours ripping the bark and branches of a dying gum tree to bits in search of borer insects.

Japanese Design Motifs

Posted by hil

ButterflyMeggiecat is a constant source of interesting art-craft-image-related notes. Her link to Japanese Free Clip Art the other day provided this lovely swallowtail butterfly image, for instance.

The designs reminded me of a book called ‘Snow, Wave, Pine:Traditional patterns in Japanese Design’ by Motoji Niwa and Sadao Hibi, which I sometimes page through in the bookshop. Its a beautiful collection of photographs of classic decorative patterns on a wide variety of objects (for example robes, laquerware, swords and ceramics), and many drawings of family crests and stylized motifs.

Puppetry Daemons in ‘His Dark Materials’

Posted by hil

By all accounts the two-part 6 hour stage adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials is absolutely stunning. I think it has had two seasons at the National Theatre in London: one in 2003, and a second that finished earlier this month.

The daemons, physical manifestations of the human soul in the shape of animals that reflect a person’s character, are puppets. They were designed by Michael Curry, who is perhaps best known for the puppets in The Lion King. Stagework has an extensive website on the adaptation, and its possible to see a few of the initial designs there, and glimpses of the puppetry in some of the video clips:

Operating the golden monkey
Lyra meets Mrs Coulter
Cittagazee performance
Captured by bears
Lyra and Iorek (scene in rehearsal)

In both these and the puppets in ‘The Lion King’, I think the magic lies in how the overall shape and actions of the creatures are suggested. Often the puppeteers are built into the shape in unexpected ways, and they use their whole bodies to make the animal move. In ‘The Lion King’, for instance, the puppeteers playing the hyenas held the hyena heads low down and at arms length, while their own heads provided the high shoulder line that is so distinctive in a hyena’s overall shape. Likewise, the polar bears in ‘His Dark Materials’, are defined by a puppeteer holding a head mask in one hand and a great clawed paw in the other, with just the suggestion of great shoulders in what looks like a flexible curved line between the two, and a powerful lumbering gait.

Bridge to the stars, which looks as if its the natural online home for ‘His Dark Materials’ fans, has a section on the stage adaptation, including a guide to the Stagework site, images and reviews.