BERELEY REPERTORY THEATER

While working as an intern at Berkeley Repertory Theater, I had an opportunity to spend some of my time creating a personal drop. I made (during my free time and down time between shows) a 6'x8' reproductinon of Kathe Kollwitz's etching, "Woman with Dead Child". I worked from a reference picture about 6"x8".

My biggest challenge for this entire project was standing the entire time. Bending over is dangerous for an artist's back, so my job was to perfect the art of using tools afixed to the end of a bamboo stick.

My process began with cartooning onto a large grid. I used charcoal to sketch, and when finished, I outlined my cartoon with Sharpie. I then created a pounce with my image and then, using crushed charcoal in a bag, copied the drawing using said pounce. Then after re-drawing the image again using Sharpie, the painting began! Using four different shades of hand mixed green, I gently layered the colors to create deep shades hopefully imitating that of the etching itself.

At some points, to create individual etch-like paint lines, I dipped green scrubbing sponges in paint and scraped them along the canvas. I also used a myriad of cleaning brushes and paint brushes to achieve the effect of "etching".