Prop Making and Fabrication
This avenue of production design is almost meditative to me. Carving wood, painting it to be realistic... this is something I'll do if I don't want to think about the stressful things in life.
1. stacked pieces of balsa attached by wood glue. I let it sit and then began to carve away.
3. Carved and sanded the handle, made some final touches to the overall shape of the knife, and made sure the surface was clean for priming and painting.
2. Smoothed out the blade with sand paper and began the same process with the handle.
4. Used a basic black as the base for the handle, and a metallic silver as the base for the blade. Once dried, I used a sponge to add the natural rust and decay that would happen to a blade.
5. Using a leather strap from a thrifted purse, I distressed it as much as I could, wrapped around the handle with super glue, and finished it off with duct tape for the "hand made" prison shank look.
This was an assignment for one of my last classes of undergrad. The assignment was to design a set for a scene in "Little Women" and I chose a grave yard scene. I used a slice of a tree stump as my base, balsa wood as my structures, and fake moss, dirt, gravel and a few real pieces of savannah spanish moss for finishing touches. For the scenic painting, the goal was for it to desperately need a power washing.
These "troll sticks" were for a SCAD theater production of Little Women. I was given this task about three days before the show, so I did my best in the time given. I stayed mostly in the wood shop for these. Lots of saws, routers, stains, paints and fabrics later, I ended up with these.
