The Barber of Seville - Final Model

Final Model for The Barber of Seville for Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class.

Photos of Exterior of Dr. Bartolo's, early morning to morning:




Photos of Interior of Dr. Bartolo's:

(See previous rough model here)

Clive Wearing - The Man without Memory

Painted Renderings for a play about Clive Wearing. For Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class.

First, about Clive Wearing:

In March of 1985, Clive Wearing, an eminent English musician and musicologist in his mid-forties, was struck by a brain infection—a herpes encephalitis—affecting especially the parts of his brain concerned with memory. He was left with a memory span of only seconds—the most devastating case of amnesia ever recorded. New events and experiences were effaced almost instantly. As his wife, Deborah, wrote in her 2005 memoir, “Forever Today”:

His ability to perceive what he saw and heard was unimpaired. But he did not seem to be able to retain any impression of anything for more than a blink. Indeed, if he did blink, his eyelids parted to reveal a new scene. The view before the blink was utterly forgotten. Each blink, each glance away and back, brought him an entirely new view. I tried to imagine how it was for him. . . . Something akin to a film with bad continuity, the glass half empty, then full, the cigarette suddenly longer, the actor’s hair now tousled, now smooth. But this was real life, a room changing in ways that were physically impossible.

In addition to this inability to preserve new memories, Clive had a retrograde amnesia, a deletion of virtually his entire past. (from The New Yorker)

The Illness - Clive becomes ill.

The Loss - Clive's illness tortures him.

The Reawakening - Still without memory, Clive rediscovers his music, and his love for his wife.

The Joy - Clive and Deborah Renew their wedding vows.

YouTube video about Clive Wearing:

another YouTube video, where Dr. Sacks talks about Clive Wearing:

To learn more about Clive Wearing see these websites:

Wikipedia Article on Clive Wearing
The Abyss - Music and Amnesia The New Yorker article by Dr. Oliver Sacks
His Wife Deborah's book about the experience
Musicophilia by Dr. Oliver Sacks
The man who keeps falling in love with his wife (UK Telegraph Article)

WNYC's radio piece on Clive Wearing:

The Barber of Seville - Photos of Rough Model

(Very) Rough Model for The Barber of Seville for Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class.

Photos of Exterior of Dr. Bartolo's, early morning:


Photos of Exterior of Dr. Bartolo's, morning:



Photos of Interior of Dr. Bartolo's:

Final Electra Model 2 - The Eye

Electra set in her own mind's eye.



One of two models for Electra for Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class. (See previous rough model here)

Final Electra Model 2 - The Eye (Video)

A short video, to help you see how the spaces relate to each other.

Related Posts: Here and here.

Final Electra Model 1 - The Desert

Electra set in a tribal desert area.


One of two models for Electra for Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class. (See previous rough model here)

Electra by Sophocles - Rough Model 2

A different concept, with Electra set in a tribal desert area.

The whole set.Close up of the same concept.

One of two rough models for Electra for Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class.

Painting - English George I Walnut Gilt Chair (1725)

Painting - English George I Walnut Gilt Chair (1725)


By Charles Murdock Lucas, 2008. Acrylic, and Ink on Watercolor Paper. From Rendering class with Franco Colavecchia

Electra by Sophocles - Rough Model 1

One of two rough models for Electra for Vicki Davis's Scene Design 1 Class.

Painted Rendering - Zeppelins and Lancet Window

A rendering project with scenery on a raked deck. "Zeppelins and Lancet Window"


By Charles Murdock Lucas, 2008. Acrylic, Marker, Ink, on Watercolor Paper. From Rendering class with Franco Colavecchia

Project - Monumental Scenery

A class project on Monumental Scenery


By Charles Murdock Lucas, 2008. Graphite on Vellum. From Rendering class with Franco Colavecchia

One-Hour watercolor for "Art" by Yasmina Reza - Project Rendering

A One-Hour watercolor of my previous one hour concept for "Art" by Yasmina Reza in Scenic Design class.

Art by Yasmina Reza - Project Rendering

One hour concept, design and rendering for "Art" by Yasmina Reza in Scenic Design class.

For more information about the play, see this article on Wikipedia.

The Illusion by Tony Kushner - Project

A class project design for the lovely play "The Illusion" by Tony Kushner.

The next-to-final moment of the play...
A storyboard of sorts with each of the different looks for the show.

More explanation to come...

The Illusion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Illusion is a play by Tony Kushner, adapted from Pierre Corneille's seventeenth-century comedy, L'Illusion Comique. It follows a contrite father, Pridamant, seeking news of his prodigal son from the sorcerer Alcandre. The magician conjures three episodes from the young man's life. Inexplicably, each scene finds the boy in a slightly different world where names change and allegiances shift. Pridamant watches, but only as the strange tale reaches its conclusion does he learn the ultimate truth about his son.

The Illusion has a lighter mood than Kushner's most famous play, Angels in America, but the two plays share a love of poetic dialogue and theatricality.

A Lesson Before Dying - Image Research

For once, I'm posting image research before renderings...

I'm working with a group of people on a scenic design for A Lesson Before Dying for class. The image research fell to me, though one of our group members, Tracey Gamble, supplied a few images of his own choosing.


Some of the themes of the play are Redemption, Freedom, Injustice, and Learning. It takes place in Louisiana in 1948.

You can buy the book this play is based on here.

Here is what amazon.com has to say about the book:

Amazon.com
Oprah Book Club® Selection, September 1997: In a small Cajun community in 1940s Louisiana, a young black man is about to go to the electric chair for murder. A white shopkeeper had died during a robbery gone bad; though the young man on trial had not been armed and had not pulled the trigger, in that time and place, there could be no doubt of the verdict or the penalty.

"I was not there, yet I was there. No, I did not go to the trial, I did not hear the verdict, because I knew all the time what it would be..." So begins Grant Wiggins, the narrator of Ernest J. Gaines's powerful exploration of race, injustice, and resistance, A Lesson Before Dying. If young Jefferson, the accused, is confined by the law to an iron-barred cell, Grant Wiggins is no less a prisoner of social convention. University educated, Grant has returned to the tiny plantation town of his youth, where the only job available to him is teaching in the small plantation church school. More than 75 years after the close of the Civil War, antebellum attitudes still prevail: African Americans go to the kitchen door when visiting whites and the two races are rigidly separated by custom and by law. Grant, trapped in a career he doesn't enjoy, eaten up by resentment at his station in life, and angered by the injustice he sees all around him, dreams of taking his girlfriend Vivian and leaving Louisiana forever. But when Jefferson is convicted and sentenced to die, his grandmother, Miss Emma, begs Grant for one last favor: to teach her grandson to die like a man.

As Grant struggles to impart a sense of pride to Jefferson before he must face his death, he learns an important lesson as well: heroism is not always expressed through action--sometimes the simple act of resisting the inevitable is enough. Populated by strong, unforgettable characters, Ernest J. Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying offers a lesson for a lifetime.

More to follow.

Note: I do not own the copyrights to some of these images, which come from iStockphoto, Corbis, and Google Images, They are for research and in no way am I representing them as my own work.This constitutes fair use. If any trouble comes about because of this, I will simply take the images down.

Desire Under the Elms - Concept Sketch

Working on concepts for Desire Under the Elms. Worked about 3 hours first creating a floorplan, sketching this out, then painting it digitally.

It's a simple approach, a slightly raised platform, with wood flooring, the facade of a house behind, with suspended elms and a cyc behind that. The stove stays onstage the whole time, but the chaise and other furniture is moved off and on for every scene. The spare nature of the set is due in part to the $300 projected budget.