Creating Posters for Newport Playgoers - 'St Trinian's'

As well as designing the posters for all eight forthcoming productions by Newport Playgoers, I also agreed to do the one for Dolman Youth Theatre's 'St Trinian's' which is at the Dolman Theatre from 8 - 10 December.

My first attempt at re-creating
a Ronald Searle St Trinian's
schoolgirl

This was a joy to do as I've always loved the drawings of Ronald Searle who created the fiendish schoolgirls as cartoons for magazines and books before they were turned into a series of highly successful films.

One of my personal heroes, John Lennon said, "The two people who have probably had the greatest influence on my life are Lewis Carroll and Ronald Searle" and you can see that influence at work in Lennon's very loose, surreal drawings.

A hockey-wielding schoolgirl

Searle probably isn't as celebrated in the UK as he once was, but his influence has been immense - you only have to see his work to appreciate this. Another of my favourite artists, Quentin Blake, is clearly influenced by Searle.

Wouldn't want to meet her on a
dark night...

Among his other work, Searle created the images for films such as 'Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines' and 'The Lavender Hill Mob' as well as scores of illustrations for advertising campaigns, books and magazines. Some great examples of his work can be seen on this excellent blog dedicated to Searle:  http://ronaldsearle.blogspot.com/

A blonde bombshell - originally
drawn by Seale smoking a cigarette
which I omitted from my version

For the poster I decided to do my own versions of some of Searle's wildcat schoolgirls. However, his very free style is not easy to imitate - it takes years of practice to draw in a style that looks effortless - and it took me many attempts before I was happy with the results.

When I had five that I thought were good enough, I coloured them in - using a similar watercolour wash employed by Searle - then composed the poster using InDesign. 

Creating Posters for Newport Playgoers - 'Humble Boy'

First attempt at drawing the title character

I had never heard of the play 'Humble Boy' by Charlotte Jones when I began the task of creating a poster for it.

Once again the internet came to my rescue, providing examples of other posters and various synopses. Apparently it's a re-working of 'Hamlet' - and bees and bee-keeping play a big part.



Second attempt at drawing Felix



I decided that I needed to draw the title character, Felix Humble. He's a lecturer at Cambridge University so I added glasses to make him look academic.

The action of the play takes place in a garden so that's where I wanted to put him, surrounded by bees - possibly with a bee landing on his nose.



Coloured version



The cartoon bee





I wasn't happy with my first attempt at drawing him, so started again. I knew I wanted to create the face and the bee separately and then put them together when I composed the final poster.



For the second drawing of the face I added more detail and once happy with it, used Photoshop to add basic colours. I then drew a large cartoon-style bee and coloured that. After that, I drew some flowers and a swarm of bees; then put the whole lot together to make the poster below.

Creating Posters for Newport Playgoers - 'Fawlty Towers'

When I rather reluctantly agreed to design the posters for Newport Playgoers' 88th Season, I decided that, in order to avoid any problems with copyright, I would create the images for the posters myself.

Original line drawing of Basil

First production of the new season will be 'Fawlty Towers' featuring a range of instantly recognisable characters such as manic hotel owner Basil, his wife Sybil, hapless Spanish waiter Manuel and Polly the maid. There was plenty of reference material available for their faces - from photos to drawings.



Coloured and cleaned-up version of Basil

 The one I spent most time on was Basil, as played on TV by John Cleese. I decided to concentrate on the characters' head and shoulders, using simple clean lines.

 After doing a version I thought captured the character I put it into Photoshop where I added the colours, layer by layer.

As well as the characters, I realised it was also important to draw the shape of the iconic sign from outside the hotel for the title of the play to go in.



Cartoon in colour of Manuel
the Spanish waiter

 With all the artwork finished, it was then a case of importing them all into Adobe InDesign and playing with a range of different compositions  to create the final poster, which would serve as a template for all the other posters.

Next: Creating the poster for 'Humble Boy' by Charlotte Jones. Click here to read it.