The New Rig: Now what do I paint? [Part 2]

If you read the previous post, then you get the idea of how this thing was made and maybe even how it functions. I was told it was kind of like a magic trick when I released the panels onstage.

Last year about this time, I posted a blog about how I came to the final image that I presented at the 2014 Miss Kansas pageant - a portrait of Theresa Vail. So here is what's looking to be that yearly post about how I developed the image that I presented onstage last Thursday and Saturday nights.

Like I said in the other post, it all really started coming to fruition when my dad and I were sitting in the Hard Rock Cafe right off of Times Square waiting for food. We thought about another Batman... we thought about Starwars, or a Jayhawk, or a celebrity portrait... but nothing really clicked because maybe the judges like a different super hero, or maybe they are Trekkies, or maybe (god forbid) they are Wildcats.

So we agreed on a patriotic theme. From here we thought of a bald eagle, the statue of liberty, a flag, recreations of already iconic art pieces, and a soldier. The soldier idea really stuck around...but I wasn't going to be sold on it until we found the right music. Anyone who saw my Batman speed painting at Miss Greater Wichita knows that it was accompanied by Hans Zimmer music and after painting to that kind of energizing music, I couldn't relinquish my background track to a soft country song about the red, white and blue... it had to display the same feelings bravery and heroism that I wanted to portray in my painting of the soldier.

(Please forgive the wrong sided salute... and wrong sided everything... I fixed it eventually.)














Dad thought about looking through some of the music from Captain America and the Avengers, and sure enough - the song literally titled, "The Avengers," was two minutes long full of building anticipation with the patriotic element built right in.

I don't have all of the sketches that I went through for this part, but I'll give you a bit of an idea...

I talked to some friends of mine in the Navy and Army, namely Joshua Shope and Sergeant Theresa Vail, asking how I could best represent a soldier, how to do it respectfully, and most importantly maybe - how to do it right in the fewest amount of brush strokes. Shope sat down with me for a while one day as we browsed uniforms and rankings on the internet, trying to figure out what kind of soldier to represent and how to make it a readable image for a  majority civilian audience.

My final sketch included a marking on the hat as well as some medals on the breast. We decided that though this wasn't a distinct version of any specific uniform, it would read correctly as a soldier and had enough visual cues to make a complete image.


As the weeks went by and the progress on the easel continues, sketches began popping up in the margins of my notes, on napkins, and in my sketchbooks. I had to decide how many colors I wanted to use, which colors those would be, would it be realistic or stylized, should it have natural skin tones or red, white and blue, do I do eyes or no eyes, what kind of hat? So many questions filtered through as I maneuvered through different sketches.

Once I had finally mapped out a full preliminary painted sketch that I was happy with, it was time to start making it happen on a grander scale - the easel.



I presented a live painting demo to one of my art classes for the final project and they suggested a pretty brilliant idea for practicing over and over again - paint on a chalkboard surface. Following their advice,  I had a few different sets of panels to practice with, one of which was primed as a chalk board surface. Utilizing that method, I was able to chalk out tracing lines for rehearsals and paint in water, which stayed dark enough on the surface in 90 seconds for me to realize the image, take note, and make adjustments before drying it off and doing another run.

As I went through cycles of the chalkboard runs as well as ones with real paint, I continued to make adjustments. You can see in this progression photo that it started in black and white, moved to blue and white, and then the final painting on the right was done in several minutes as a mini mock-up, but is when I decided to add in red.

The first black one was too severe, then the blue and white one looked like a blue print, so the red was added anticipating to use it as a mid tone accent color. You can also see which details started to be unnecessary to portray the image and how it gradually got cropped closer and closer. The chalk board idea was really helpful in committing the muscle memory of it all to memory and being able to work through kinks without having to re-prime the panels every time. Using real paint is certainly a time consuming ordeal - priming the panels, waiting for it to dry, doing the 90 second painting, waiting for it to dry, and then starting it all over again (in heels, of course). All in all, I want to say that I only did the full painting in real paint (successfully) as I ended up performing it onstage maybe two or three times at home...

Once I got to Miss Kansas, a new set of problems came up. While many of the women can practice in their rooms if they are singers or instrumentalists or dancers, it is pretty difficult for me to practice my painting in the dorm rooms that we stay in. So during down time between rehearsals once we were in the arena, I went over and did some "dry runs" with the easel and panels (dry runs are just miming the actions with no paint or medium on the brushes...like marking a dance on the floor). 

Among the first times I did this, for the first time ever in this process, the first two panels fell at the same time when I released the pin. The force of the fall caused themselves to wedge inexplicably tight between the catch piece and the back of the easel. Jerry, who runs all things backstage, tried to help me weasel them out to no avail. We literally had to break that catch piece to get them out and set it to glue overnight. Needless to say, I was terrified. 

For talent performance, we get two run-throughs onstage with the music and that's it before the actual competition. During the first one, the same thing happened but with the latter two panels. This didn't cause the easel to malfunction like that first time and I mended it within the performance, but it was not how it was supposed to work. The second run, the panels still didn't fall correctly but that was entirely my fault - I pulled the pins in the wrong order. So at this point - I had not done this thing successfully at all in about a week and I was competing with it in just a few hours. Once again, I was terrified. 

The sun descended in the sky and the competition was underway. After intermission, I slipped on my headphones and put on my "Miss K Pump Up Playlist" of motivating songs accumulated from friends and started to get in the zone. My paints were prepped. I'd tested the panels. All that was left to do was to deliver...

The music started and my brushes went flying and WHAM! The first panel fell without a hitch! The crowd erupted! Second panel - WHOOSH! Seamless. Third panel - SMACK! And I tilted the easel up to present it to the audience as I mimicked my painted soldier with a crisp salute and a bow. I did it. 

I had one more chance Saturday night as my name was called in the Top Ten to present the unique talent of speed painting to the Miss Kansas judges and audience. And again, it worked when it needed to. Not only that, but I actually had extra time and decided on a whim to add in some red and white stripes. You can see a video of the final performance here.

As I enter my second year as "the speed painter", I can say that live painting has given me a thrill like no other I have ever experienced. With just 90 seconds to present your best talent to a panel of judges who may or may not know anything about art, I am certainly taking a risk in whipping up some live art to dish out to this community. I want to thank everyone who has been so supportive of my work, those who helped me progress and build my ideas and help this all come to life, those who keep telling me to never give up, and those who invite me to your events and organizations to further share the gift of art.


Most of all, I want to thank those who serve and give themselves to our country in the armed forces. That's what this painting was all about. Thank you for allowing me the freedom to pursue my dreams and travel our great state to promote something I am passionate in. Thank you for giving your minds, bodies, and time away from your own homes and families so that mine may be safe. Thank you for your service to our country in every capacity that you give.

Stay tuned to see whatever crazy idea I bring to the table next year that I think can top this performance. Follow me on Facebook or Instagram and message me if you would like live painting at your next event!

- Annika Wooton

Miss Greater Wichita

Top Ten

The New Rig: From the drawing board to the shop [Part 1]

Miss Kansas is over for this year and I am back home trying to figure out where to put this massive easel rig of mine.

Many of you who were following my journey throughout the year and especially this week have seen pictures and video footage of the final performance. However, I thought I might let you in on the genesis of this whole idea and how the whole idea was formed...

It all started in New York City...

My dad and I spent a few days in NYC over spring break - mostly to spend time together in the Big Apple, but also with the mindset to come up with something stellar to present at Miss Kansas. We went to the MoMA as well as the Society of Illustrators museum in hopes of coming up with a grand idea.

It was when we were sitting in the Hard Rock Cafe just off Times Square when we broke out the pen and paper to really put down some concrete ideas.

Earlier in the year, I had posted on Facebook asking people what they wanted to see in a live painting. I was actually asking for subject matter ideas...but the people wanted multiple canvases. So for the upcoming performance at the time for KU's Got Talent, I embarked on the adventure to paint on three canvases.

So as we were brainstorming for the Miss Kansas pageant, the idea hung in our heads of how to manipulate the use of multiple canvases or panels without separate easels for each one. We toyed with the idea of painting on glass, or painting in glue with glitter thrown at the end, or simply doing the same rig I had last year. But of course that was really out of the question.

At some point in the brainstorm process at Hard Rock, we decided upon a patriotic theme with a tri-panel approach. (Forgive the salute with the wrong hand... I was ignorant to details at this point.) I don't have pictures of all my sketches, as they were on the back of a placemat and got lost at some point, but take a look at the very first visualizations of this crazy idea:

 What you see here, and will realize later on as you scroll through pictures of the real deal, is that even though my dad and I had NO idea how this thing would actually work, we had a pretty solid concept to start with that ended up being eerily accurate to the final product.

 

I returned to Kansas, not entirely sure how I was going to pull this off. I approached the man who runs the Common Shop in the art building, Cotter. I explained the whole idea to him in a long winded monologue and when I finished, he looks at me and says, "Okay... what's this for....?" And I said, "Well, I'm using it as my final for this one studio course I'm in but...end-game... I'm competing to be Miss Kansas..."

Okay PAUSE. Let's note that I was meeting with him between having an 8 am studio and about to go to the gym, so I was definitely nottttt up to pageant-par. 

So Cotter looks at me and says, "Yeah you sure look like it," in jest, of course. And then looks back down at the sketches and says, "We're gonna win this." Not only did I just attain an incredible mind to help me engineer this easel, but he proceeded to tell me how he lived down the street from Debbie Barnes, one of our Miss Kansas's who proceeded to win Miss America and how she babysat him as a child. Who knew!!

And the building process began.

I made a moquette out of cardstock paper to create a visual 3-D representation of what we wanted to happen. Following that display, I used a large sheet of foam core to develop the dimensions I wanted, the height, and make sure it would fit in the back of my Prius before we started building the actual thing.

I have to give all the credit to Cotter for materializing this rig and coming up with the engineering genius. Each panel is sustained on a separate track. There are three holes at the top of each panel that function with three individual pegs at different heights that are inserted from the back.

Each pin is pulled to release each panel at an isolated moment with a nib that catches the panel at the bottom so that it doesn't fall forward. The video to the left is the first time I saw it work. Apparently the first time Cotter released the first panel on our prototype version, the entire bottom edge blew off from the force, which is why you can see that is it reinforced in the version in the video.

I came in every day after my morning studio course to trouble shoot and bounce around ideas with Cotter. After seeing how this first version worked, we decided to elongate the entire surface so that the last panel drop wasn't so whimpy - and added a few more inches for it to fall in the final version.






The entire thing is assembled with only four pieces and two screws excluding the three panels and fits in the back of a Prius. This made things wonderfully simple as I transferred the rig to my house, back to the art building, back to my house, and then finally to Pratt for the competition.

I'll post another blog about the actual painting process... this is getting lengthy!

- Annika Wooton

Miss Greater Wichita