THIS IS AUDREY II SIGN

Making the Audrey II sign:

Today and yesterday I worked on the Audrey II sign for the Little Shop of Horrors mini musical. This involved sketching out the letters onto the MDF board, I got an image to use as a reference for the font as Hayley had said that she wanted to keep it quite similar, I made a few slight changes to fill the space better. After sketching out the outline of the letters and a border. I primed the entire board with a layer of Covent Garden primer to help the paint grip better. I then tried using a paintbrush with an off white emulsion paint as a base, However it left brushstrokes, which is something I wanted to avoid. Luckily I was able to purchase a sponge from the university sponge and this gave a thicker coverage over the board, I sponged paint over the whole board and just dusted round the letter so I still had an idea where the outline was, ready for me to fill these in.

After this had dried, using acrylic paint I painted in the letters as neat as possible, I then outlined them with a sharpie to add more definition and also neaten up any unsmooth edges. I then cleaned up any bits of white that had got colour on them with some more emulsion.

For the border I used masking tape as a paint barrier and carefully stuck this down along the line I had redrawn over the emulsion, this was a 5cm border around the whole board. I then used some left over gold paint that they had from the Maidstone project and painted round the borders, after this had dried. Me and Kerry went over the gold paint with a Gold glitter paint. This has a purple tone to it but when dry it goes clear and allows the glitter to stay. We did this with two coats, waiting for it to dry in between. This allowed us to create a really pigmented glitter finish. Kerry still has a light up arrow to make, and we still need to add string or chain into the top, this is so it can be hanged on stage next to Audrey II. Overall I'm really happy with the outcome, it took me longer than expected, because its surprising how much care has to go into typography for it to look neat and professional, but from a distance I feel like it is really clear and will have that extra bit of impact once the arrow is added and we can see it on stage alongside the flowers and other props.

Planning the lettering with a pencil sketch.

Finished lettering.

Painting the border with the different layers of gold paint and gold glitter paint.

Close up of the gold glitter paint before it dry.