John Hiemstra Creative » Scenic Painting

scenic painting for the stage: San Diego Opera

John — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:45:38 +0000

One of the few pictures of me painting at the San Diego Opera scenic studios, my first gig in southern California after leaving NCSA. Erratic management made that shop a tough place to make art, but it also created the opportunity at Viejas Casino that led me to work later for SceneryWest in North Hollywood. This scrim backdrop for a holiday movie premiere was sort of unusual in that shop, typically doing more hard scenery, finishes and textures.

Faux Painting at SeaWorld San Diego

John — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:42:19 +0000

This was a great place to paint.

The tower is steel and I got it all painted with the bright green primer you can see on the legs at the bottom of the picture. The idea of this faux finish from the scenic artist perspective (“well, what does it look LIKE? “) was that the tower belonged in the city of the sea people who performing the “Cirque de la Mer” show, and had been dragged up from the ocean depths and installed to mark the entry into the stadium, I mean, world of the show.

We used a variety of faux painting and scenic painting techniques on this project, and this was actually one of my first custom art experiences where the distinctions in technique became kind of irrelevant in designing the process and teaching it to two other painters- three sets of hands worked on this tower by the time it was all said and done, but as charge artist, I claimed this one.

Scenic painting | SeaWorld San Diego

John — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:46:00 +0000

An overview of the original “Cirque de la Mer” set installed at SeaWorld San Diego in 2001. I worked as a scenic artist on the set pieces in Los Angeles for SceneryWest, and then ran the paint touch-up and tie-in work of the installation onsite in San Diego.

Getting to paint: a holiday unto itself!

John — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 08:43:57 +0000

I spent a few hours each of the July 4 weekend working on the sky paintings for this Friday’s reception at Coalesce, furniture designer Joseph Bedford’s gallery in Little Italy. Here’s a couple more pix I didn’t put up on the murals and faux blog, even if these paintings germinated in scenic painting with its faux style techniques and the ever popular sky mural as a ceiling and surround technique.

coliseum paintings in the loft

July 5in the studio downstairs-- thnx Jen!

almost ready to unwrap

I've been wanting to properly finish these little ones for a long time.