Doane’s Theatre department is revitalizing a class for next semester. The class is called Scenic Painting and is being taught by Professor Robin McKercher.
The class is offered as a way for students to learn how to paint realistically for set designs or for interior decoration.
“It is mostly geared toward creating scenery and doing Trompe l’oeil work. It’s French for ‘fool the eye’ and it’s a technique used for creating wood grains and marble,” McKercher said.
The technique is used in film and on Broadway productions so that the production does not have to transfer all the way to a forest. They can paint a realistic forest and have the characters placed in front of it.
“I worked in New York City for ten years […] I painted for film and television, and we are talking major motion pictures […] we had to create things for the film industry that were impossible, even if the camera was inches away from the surface, to tell that it was a painted surface,” McKercher said.
Although the class is in the theater department, it is not offered to only theater students.
“It’s just a course that’s open to the entire school population, and from someone who worked in the industry, someone who knows how to ‘fool the eye’ and there are definitely techniques that can be used in theater, but there are also techniques that can be used in like painting your cabinets in a cool way,” McKercher said.
There were a lot of inspirations for the course.
“I want to take that skillset that I learned in NYC, on shows like ‘The Secret Garden,’ which won a Tony Award and then bring them to my students here, in the theater department, but also in the art department, and anybody who is also just sort of interested in something that is so unique,” McKercher said.
The course will be offered in the fall.
