Third day down on my new (temporary) job as a scenic painter and I'm exhausted. The last gig I clearly remember working all day in the sun was the load-in of the NFL Experience at Chrissy Field, which is more than a decade ago.
Great hourly pay, though. Best I've had since that emergency lighting load-in at a local high school. I've made rent already. If I stick through until opening I'll have next month's bills paid as well.
I'm rusty as heck and I was never a scenic to begin with. Like a lot of things, it is a skill most techies can claim the rudiments of, and skilled techies can fake if pressed. (The difference being, "most" techies can do basic carpentry and hang lights. "Skilled" techies can also weld, and they can design the lights as well.) There is a whole language of methods and techniques, from gridding (to transfer painter's elevations to the flat or drop), to scumbling and rag-rolling and feather-dusting and wet blending. And then there are all the skills in identifying kinds of paints and mixing colors from scratch and really, really knowing how to take care of brushes, and that's the point at which even this skilled techie has to back off and make sure he had made clear to his prospective employer that he is no scenic.
I've painted sets. I've painted my own sets (functioning as essentially the lead scenic artist). So I can stumble through it. But I'm rusty now and there's a heck of a lot I never knew.
For all of that, and all of the near sun-stroke heat and long hours with cold and swelling hands washing paint rollers, the only real bubble in this week is knowing I've passed the preferred delivery date on the Raygun and I'm going to be pushing hard to hit the final, drop-dead deliverable.
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