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Scenic Painter

Paints backdrops and scenery for theater, film, and event productions.

Did you know?

Scenic painters use tricks like scumbling, spattering, dry brushing and rag rolling so painted brick or marble looks real from the back row.

How subjects help

Art & Design: Paint fake brick, marble and wood so convincingly that audiences believe it is real.
Physics: Use perspective and how stage lights change colour so a flat backdrop looks deep and real.

A famous name

Léon Bakst: Russian painter who designed and painted colourful stage sets for the Ballets Russes from 1909.

Try it yourself: Hunt for textures and make a rubbing picture

Put paper over something textured and rub the side of a crayon gently across it until the texture appears.
Collect at least five different textures on separate bits of paper, using different colours.
Tear your rubbings into pieces with your fingers and arrange them into a picture, like a tree made of bark and leaf textures.
Show someone and see if they can guess what made each texture.

Printmakers and scenic painters build surfaces from texture, pressing or painting them so a flat sheet or a stage flat looks like wood, stone or brick.

Adapted from Frye Art Museum: Tracking Down Texture activity.

Also try: Photograph one object three ways.

Known for it in

USA, UK, France, Germany, Australia