Ralph Bacon illustration and design

For this fantasy set, the director asked that the tree not be realistic but instead, invoke the magic of the classic play.  The surface texture was manipulated with line and color to appear to undulate far more that it actually did. 

This tree was constructed out of canvas stretched over a padded frame.  The undulating lines enhanced the fantastic feel of the set.

This is the second set of large-scale paintings created for a set painted on moveable panels.  

This set was designed as a series of large-scale paintings on moveable set pieces.  Each panel was rotated for scene changes revealing another set of paintings.  

A closeup of one of the series of panels for an interior set design.

The garden set of The Importance of Being Earnest rendered as large-scale paintings. 

The central panel of the garden scene of The Importance of Being Earnest

This was a project completed for a community theater production.  The puppet could be manipulated by a person standing inside the neck of the dragon. 

This set is entirely faux painting aside from the arched entryways.  It had to serve as the backdrop for all of the scenes for this farce comedy on Shakespeare's works. The idea was to create something that would be very inexpensive, flexible and interesting to look at.  The whole thing was created on site with a limited palette.

This is a closer view of the set for The Complete William Shakespeare Abridged.

This was used upstage as a sort of visual narrator. Each page is a full 4 x 8 foot sheet of luan. A page would be turned at the end of each scene as each spread depicted the next "Chapter".

I designed each page, which was projected and traced onto each sheet. Black on white proved good enough—props should not upstage the actors.