Month: November 2004

If you’d like a glimpse of a couple of the sets I designed for the forthcoming film The Muppets Wizard of Oz, then go to: http://muppets.go.com/

Click on anything that looks Ozzy. So far I’ve seen the Haunted Forest and a piece of the Munchkin Village on the site.

The Muppets Wizard of Oz was way fun to work on as we Valley Dudes are wont to say. It’s got a great, edgy, irreverent script. The picture was helmed by a guy who totally GETS IT — Kirk Thatcher. Kirk and I grew up with all the same cultural references and are both fans of a wide range of turn-of-the-century art, so we had a real communicative shorthand. When he’d say “a little less Guimard, slightly more Horta,” (those are references to two Art Nouveau architects) I’d know exactly what he meant without having to ask for further explanation. Working with a director like that is a dream job come true.

One of the interesting challenges for me that made this project different from my design work for other live action feature films was that I had to design sets that included objects and structures for the Muppets’ puppeteers to hide behind.

Kirk and I both lobbied heavily for this to be a theatrical feature but that didn’t happen, so The Muppets Wizard of Oz should be available for viewing on your home screen this coming May.

Some of my most popular pictures are in what I call my Rackham/Dulac style (after two turn-of-the-century children’s illustrators who used this technique extensively, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac). It dates back a hundred years or so but it’s pretty easy to do. Here’s how:
1) Pencil your picture.
2) Ink your picture with a Hunt crowquill pen, using a 50/50 mixture of waterproof black (India) and sepia inks. That will make your black a nice warm black.
3) After the ink is dry, erase the pencil lines.
4) Mask off your image using white art tape.
5) On your palette, prepare a little pool of raw umber watercolor.
6) Quickly soak the image using a very wet fine-grained sea sponge (or “art sponge”), then wring out the sponge.
7) Using a wide (about three quarters of an inch) Aquarelle watercolor brush, cover your image with the raw umber watercolor.
8) Using the wringed-out sponge, dab and blot up the raw umber watercolor in the areas of your picture that you want to remain light. You may have to wring out your little sponge several times during this process. Work quickly (and near a sink) before the watercolor dries. This will give your image an antique parchment look. You can also add a little raw umber with a smaller brush (not too small) to the areas you want to be darker.
9) While the picture is still wet you can add and perform any wet-on-wet techniques you care to (I usually do this in the sky areas, adding various colored tints).
10) Let the picture dry a little bit, then start adding layers of transparent watercolor to your piece, slowly building up the color to what you want it to finally be.
11) After your picture has dried, use an eraser if necessary to lighten some of your watercolor.
12) When dry, you’ll notice that sometimes your watercolor has greyed-out some of your black pen lines. Mix up a batch of colored ink (never dyes) appropriate to your color scheme with a lot of water to get a nice PALE transparent wash. Brush this over your picture. It will do two things: It should unite your color scheme and it should also bring back the intensity of most of your pen lines.
13) Sometimes adding a touch of Prismacolor pencils is called for to bring out some highlights (I use the Cream and Sand colors a lot for this), darken some shadows or add some complementary “color sparks” to your picture.
14) Carefully remove the white tape.
15) Retouch with white goauche any unsightly color bleeds if necessary. If you need to pop in any white highlights on your piece, now’s the time.
16) When completely dry, spray the piece with Krylon Crystal Clear acrylic coating. Don’t breathe that stuff — you’ll end up with plastic lungs!

As a result of all this work, you should have a brand new ancient-looking masterpiece!

Good Luck!

William Stout