New post: Feeling the fear and sewing anyway, in which I talk about making a dress from fabric that is important to me for sentimental reasons, and about stretching myself and my sewing abilities.
@bsag Wow, I know nothing about sewing, but that's a reallllly inspiring read. I hope I can be as brave and successful as you, when I reach the point of beginning to restore old radios! Keep up the good work. 📻
@bsag Wow, thank you for sharing. Savibg things like that fabric is my default too, so it is inspiring to hear it get used.
After all, she gave it to me because it was languishing in her stash!
This line rang so true for me. I have such a hard time starting physical art projects—my perfectionism is a powerful foe.
And what a gorgeous dress! It was great to read the details about its construction too. 😀
@bsag Also, drafting (lighting plots) on paper is definitely fun and a pencil makes me think differently than my trackball. But after the experience of typing in different dimensions and the drawing just changing, I could never go back to a full paper process.
@Bruce Thanks! I know that feeling very well. Nothing is ever perfect (this dress certainly isn’t!) but it was a fun process and I feel fantastic in the result, so it doesn’t matter. The way I think about it is that if you don’t try and fail a bit, you never learn and improve. You only learn with physical projects by doing.
@Bruce I enjoy the process with paper too. I also don’t think I would know how to accomplish the drafts with the software if I hadn’t learned on paper. It’s a bit counterintuitive and you need to see how it works physically (at least, I needed that step). But the software will save me some sellotape!
@bsag Yep on the try and fail. I don’t think I’ve ever had a show open and not still have cues to “fix”.
@bsag I still do my roughs on paper—it’s so much easier to worksheet with trace on top of the entire plot than to just see a portion of it on the screen.
Though the day Wacom releases a 36”x48” table, I’ll start using tracing paper on top of that! 🙃
@Bruce That table would be something to see! Do you draft on a 2d plan of the stage and then plan how the lighting will fill the 3D space?
@bsag Yep, I draft in 2D. Worksheets help me visualize how the light will function in 3D space. First step is a section showing the beams, then I take the measurements from that and draft on top of the plan where beams will be at 6’-0” off the deck (actor height). And it's much easier to do that visualization when looking at the whole space on a drafting table rather than paning and zooming around in Vectorworks.
These aren't from the same show, but should give you an idea. Lots and lots and lots of tracing paper is involved. 🙃