Hindsight

I went to see David Greig’s play Dunsinane, a production of the National Theatre of Scotland and Royal Shakespeare Company, playing at Shakespeare Theater Co. through 2/21 — More info here. I thought it was quite brilliant. It starts more or less where Macbeth ends, with Siward attempting to stabilize the country whose monarch he’s just unseated. It quickly asserts a more accurate version of the history than Shakespeare’s – Lady Macbeth is still alive, is known by her actual name, Gruach, and has a living son, Lulach. Macbeth has ruled for 17 years (relatively peacefully by Gruach’s account). A finer point, and I’m not sure if this is historically supported, but by clan heredity she embodies the crown of Scotland, her husband(s) being king only by marriage. The story is basically told from the point of view of the English soldiers, who find themselves in hostile territory, trying to stabilize a country whose culture they don’t understand — a deliberate parallel to the Iraq and Afghanistan situation.

The play is powerful, the acting is superb, and the themes are satisfyingly complex. Highly recommended.

Here are my sketches from the performance, with the usual caveat about a dark theater, blind contour, unflattering likenesses, etc.

I’m on a panel with several of these folks on Sunday. It should be very cool.

The Folger Shakespeare Theater’s Mary Stuart just opened, and per my usual modus operandi, I went and did sketches. The house tends to be quite dark there, so most of these are “blind contour” drawings, with the bizarre proportions and overlaps that result from that.

The story is quite engaging, and the acting is excellent. The play has, as its title might suggest, a sympathetic view toward Mary Stuart, but also conveys the complex and dangerous situation in which Elizabeth I found herself with little choice but to treat Mary as an enemy. The sets and costumes are extremely well done, though I found the lack-of-color palette combined with a lack of action in the play made the performance a bit less interesting visually. Still, the personalities and various twists of the story kept me engaged, and I recommend the show to anyone who is (at least somewhat) interested in the Elizabethan period of history.

STC was kind enough to invite me to attend their magnificent production of The Tempest a second time. Sketches below!

Next up for STC are The Metromaniacs, a “rediscovered French comedy masterpiece” from 1738, translated/adapted by David Ives, and David Greig’s Dunsinane, a sequel to Macbeth, produced the National Theatre of Scotland and Royal Shakespeare Company.

Also the Folger is doing Mary Stuart, about the power struggle between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots.

Tempest sketches part two (part one here) —

Prospero’s final monologue is especially powerful in this production. Here it is in its entirety:

Macbeth is coming in just a month. The official release date is Feb 10th.  You can pre-order it with your local/favorite indy bookstore or on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, etc. I will sign all pre-orders placed with Politics & Prose, and you can order signed copies directly from me starting a few days after the release. The eBook should also launch on Feb. 10th on most platforms.

To whet your appetite, I have set up an official product page (with interior preview) here. And now, I’m going to give you a look at the process I used to create this book…

As usual, I sketched the rough layouts using Adobe InDesign. This has the advantage of being super-easy to edit as I go along (as well as later, after I get feedback), being able to quickly move things from one page to another, use type and object styles to control document-wide formatting, and have a single master file. The main disadvantage is that the master file sometimes gets too big. I’ve learned various tricks to deal with that but it can still be a little tricky to manage.

After sketching and editing the rough layout, I printed each page in a light yellow and drew over it with pencil.

I scanned the drawings back in, used a b&w adjustment layer to get rid of the yellow lines, then did a greyscale value painting on a multiply layer over the pencil art.

I added textures I had created with ink washes on watercolor paper, then I added local colors and effects.

Sound effects go on their own layer so they can be removed or changed if the book gets translated into another language.

Finally, I dropped the art back into InDesign and drew clean borders and speech balloons.

– Artwork copyright 2014 by Gareth Hinds, shown by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville MA –

On Friday I went to see Shakespeare Theatre Company’s The Tempest. This is a really GREAT production of one of my favorite plays, directed by Ethan McSweeny. It’s the best Shakespeare play I’ve seen so far in DC, and one of the most lavish Shakespeare productions I’ve seen, period. It’s up ’til mid January and I HIGHLY recommend it. More details and sketches below, though you might want to stop reading now to avoid spoilers.

Incidentally (and in the interest of full disclosure), I am doing a workshop with STC about adapting Shakespeare to comics  on Dec 21st at 4:30pm.

Continue Reading »

On Sunday I went back for the second day of Shakespeare Theatre Co’s Henry IV rehearsals. Like Saturday, it was a lot of fun. I met more of the cast, I introduced myself to director Michael Kahn, and I had a seat right in the front with plenty of light to draw. I also found that they have Merchant in their store (along with my competitors Manga Shakespeare and No Fear Shakespeare — I’ll see if I can get them to carry Lear and R&J).

I concentrated on faces in a lot of these sketches because apparently nobody but Falstaff is in their real costume yet. Surprising how well a sword belt over a hoodie works, though.

First, I finished coloring Macbeth last week. This was cause for much rejoicing, and a brief vacation to the True/False Film Festival, which was awesome. I may write at more length about the films I saw, but the highlights were probably Tim’s Vermeer and Happy Valley.

So, what now? For a few weeks I’ll be drawing final speech balloons and making art edits, and then the book should be DONE before the end of the month. I’m excited to enjoy the spring weather without being chained to my drawing table 70 hours a week! Speaking of which, we had some beautiful spring weather today, and I went downtown to enjoy it for a bit, and to catch an open rehearsal of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Henry IV part 1.

Have I mentioned DC is a great town for Shakespeare? Not one but two dedicated Shakespeare theaters, and usually other assorted  groups doing Shakespeare at any given time throughout the area. I’m especially thrilled that Shakespeare Theatre Company is doing free open rehearsals for their upcoming Henry IV parts 1 & 2 (starring Stacy Keach as Falstaff)! I love to see these things in progress, and it’s often a good way to meet some of the cast & crew.

They had the house lights down, and I didn’t get there early enough to sit right in front, so as usual I was trying to draw in the dark. With that caveat, here are a few sketches I managed to get.

The rehearsal was a lot of fun. It really looks like an excellent show. Henry IV isn’t the easiest story to make compelling, but they’re doing a great job with it. In an era of stripped-down productions, STC has WAY above average production values, so it’s quite a feast for the eyes too. I definitely want to see the full show, and I may go back for the second rehearsal tomorrow.

They had a little mingling time afterward, and I got to meet Mr. Keach. He was extremely gracious, and complimented my sketches. (I also sat right behind director Michael Kahn during the rehearsal, but after the show he was having important scheduling/tech discussions, and I didn’t think it was appropriate to interrupt him, so I didn’t get to show him my work. Maybe another time.)

By the way, apropo of meeting celebrities, I just found this in an old sketchbook. It’s from a music-store appearance, I believe from the “9 Objects of Desire” tour, so that would have been…1996?

I’m afraid I’ve been hiding under a rock for a while now, due to my Macbeth schedule being well and truly off the rails. I don’t like to brag/complain about how hard I’m working, because I know a lot of folks have to work two jobs, are on call all the time, have kids, etc, etc — but I will say that I have been working such long hours coloring Macbeth that (a) I got through the audiobook of Neal Stephenson’s 1000-page Anathem in less than a week, and (b) my Photoshop windows started to burn in to my monitor.

I did, however, escape the studio for half a day last Sunday to spend a few hours at the National Gallery, enjoy an unhealthy dinner at Shake Shack, and then watch the Folger Shakespeare Theater’s excellent production of Richard III, directed by Robert Richmond, which runs through March 9th.

The show features very good, consistent performances, with superb clarity and a nice “dynamic range” from disturbing to funny — plus nice use of trap doors, and the space has been totally transformed from the theater’s usual configuration. The cast, many of whom are depicted in these sketches: Drew Cortese, Alyssa Wilmoth Keegan, Howard Overshown, Michael Sharon, Julia Motyka, Richard Sheridan Willis, Sean Fri, Michael Gabriel Goodfriend, Nanna Ingvarsson, Naomi Jacobson, Daniel Flint, Andrew Criss, Remy Brettell, Holden Brettell, and Jenna Berk. Very cool costumes designed by Mariah Hale and sewn by Ananda Keator.

I’ve been crunching hard on Macbeth (I delivered the line work last week), so I’ve got a backlog of things to post. But here’s one I wanted to get up right away. The Folger Shakespeare Library was kind enough to invite me to their very powerful new production of Romeo & Juliet. I drew a bunch, but the house was very dark, so I was drawing completely blind — hence the rather dada-esque nature of most of these sketches.

The show is directed by Aaron Posner, and stars Michael Goldsmith as Romeo and Erin Weaver as Juliet, plus Aaron Bliden, Rex Daugherty, Brian Dykstra, Sherri Edelen, Eric Hissom, Brad Koed, Shannon Koob, Joe Mallon, Allen McCullough, Matthew McGee, and Michele Osherow.

Later in the season they are doing Richard III and Two Gentlemen of Verona.