Spontaneous Painting On A Day Off

Today is Tuesday. I had no plans except upcycling my sofa and buying some wrapping paper. I spontaneously decided to do some painting. Both took about 1 1/2 hours each to finish. I am fairly happy with how these turned out. It's been so long since I've painted anything other than a costume design! I first is meant to be a painting Marilyn Monroe, but I think it looks more like Gwen Stefani. What do you think?

If you would like to purchase any of my paintings you can find them in my Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/listing/117937418/original-painting-of-marilyn-monroe

The Government Inspector

"Designer Amy Cartwright had created a multi-faceted set of exposed slatted walls with portraits of the Tsar, odd furniture and a general feeling of disarray." (NWN)

 

 

I have just finished designing The Government Inspector at The Watermill Theatre. It is such a unique venue and I always love working there. It's a tiny theatre, placed in the middle of nowhere, but they always create such fantastic productions. Previous shows have transferred to the West End, Broadway and have toured around the world!

 

I met with the director Seamus Allen for an interview in July and was obviously over the moon when he asked me to design it. I originally trained as a Theatre Designer, but have found myself mostly designing film in recent times. It's such a joy to get stuck into a play design again. The production was for the Theatre's Young Company, which meant that we didn't have the biggest budget in the world to play with, but I am amazed that with hardwork from everyone we managed to get everything exactly how I had envisaged it.

 

The design premise was that this play is set within a poor town in the middle of a great depression. The authorities were corrupt and the poor were really poor. We decided that the town had once probably been quite rich, then lost it's wealth, then gained a bit of money again, so they started to rennovate the town, then lost the money again. That's a long backstory, but I acheived this by having dusty paint pots lying around as if they had just been left there during the work. Here is the picture that served as my main inspiration fot the set and which triggered my design. I found it here.

 

I was so happy when I found this picture as it showed just what Seamus and I had been talking about. We were really keen for this show to be really colourful, but quite faded. Although the concept might seem quite serious, it is a comedy afterall!

 

Here are some of the production stills taken by Philip Tull of the final set.

 

The costumes were an absolute joy to put together. The wardrobe team at the Watermill were fantastic. After spending about 4 hours trawling through their costume store we amazingly managed to find most of what we needed. The idea behind the costume was that the characters wanted to make themselves look as rich and important as possible, but without the funds to buy any fancy clothes. They have pieced together their outfits the best they could manage, even though a lot of it doesn't quite match. The Governor particular fancies himself as a bit of a military general and has created himself (what he thinks is) a military looking jacket with a plain blazer with lots of medals and badges stuck over it.

All in all the play was a great success. It had a short run of 4 nights, but completely sold out! The audience seemed to love it and laughed the whole way through. I am so pleased to have been involved with this and now I can't wait to design another play again.

My First T-Shirt Design

This was my first ever T-Shirt design.

I designed it and entered it into my first ever competition.

And it was a runner up!

The competition was to design a T-Shirt for the company Artecollage in association with Talenthouse. Here is a link to the competition. Although I am disappointed not to win 1st prize and the money, I am thrilled to be one of the 5 runner ups. As an artist I have always been a bit nervous about what others may think about my work. It is such a huge confidence booster to have my design picked out of 80 entrants, especially when most of them were incredible. This will give me a fantastic start to 2013, when I plan to focus on my art a lot more than I have in recent years. I feel so inspired now and can't wait to design some more graphics!

Here are all the winning designs from Artecollge's blog post on the competition-

...And here is my original drawing for the design. I first drew this picture of Mary Pickford, the iconic silent movie star, by hand with pencil on white paper. I then scanned it in and coloured it using photoshop. I then played around with the contrast and brightness until I was happy. 

I first became interested in her because of Katie Melua's song 'Mary Pickford'. It's such a simple, pretty song which quickly established itself as one of my favourites. I definitely recommend listening to it.

"Mary Pickford used to eat roses

Thought that they’d make her

Beautiful and they did

One supposes"

I hope you like my design and well done to everyone else that entered!

Little Reminders

I recently Art Directed this commercial 'Little Reminders' for Danone. I am thrilled to announce that it has just been awarded 3rd place and 2000 euro prize in Eyeka's Bonafont competition.

I am really pleased with how this turned out. Despite our very limited budget I think we've managed to make this commercial look really flashy and expensive. I ended up only spending a £50 Art Department budget and managed to beg borrow and steal nearly everything. I was thrilled that designer Emma-Kate Wood let us borrow the gorgeous blue dress which was one of her beautiful creations. It was also great to reunite with director Alex Sufit of Lexitricity productions again.

Now I am just looking forward to our pizza party to celebrate our victory. Woo!

The Polka Dots

Remember my previous post on the costumes i designed for The Polka Dots music promo-

http://amyellecartwright.blogspot.com/2011/09/back-to-1940s-with-polka-dots.html

Well 2 of the videos are online now and here they are!

Watch this space to see the rest of the videos!

I Fell In Love With Paris

At the weekend i filmed the music video for group 'Sheila Mcqueen' and their song called Paris. You can find the song on their Myspace page.

I was the Art Director. It's not often, but sometimes it's so refreshing to have to worry about props and not the costumes and clothing. This video had to look like vintage Paris and i had so much fun tracking down the props. I managed to find most of it on ebay!

This has definiely been one of my favourite shoots to date. I got to work with so many amazing and talented people, including director Robert Jury who i have worked with many times before. We all gelled perfectly together and i really feel this working harmony will result with a fantastic video!

I think the release date is late January but i will of course let you know once it's out. In the meantime here are a few sneaky photos of the shoot. Let me know what you think!

Back to the 1940s with 'The Polka Dots'

Sorry i haven't posted for a while. I've been so crazy working, moving house, designing and organising things i haven't had the time. So busy! I promised myself that tonight i would make the effort to blog something... so here it goes!

I thought i would show a litte bit of what i have been up to. I have just finished designing the costumes for a music promo. It's directed by Adam Coop for Angelic Films and acts as a showcase for a band called 'The Polka Dots'. 'The Polka Dots' bring you a modern twist on the legendary Andrews Sisters 1940s American close harmony trio.

This was such an amazing project for me. As you well know i have been dying to work on something period for a while. Buying more and more jeans can get really dull, so this was an absolute breath of fresh air!

The lovely ladies at the National Theatre's Costume Hire luckily managed to squeeze me in for a last minute appointment. I spent the whole day picking out LOADS of 1940s clothing. They have so much there at reasonable prices. It was absolute heaven!

Here are a selection of the stills taken by photographer Alex Ruocco. I think they all look fantastic!-