Carved foam is used in a variety of ways in theater.  Once it�s carved, it probably needs to be painted.  Here are four options forpreparing your foam scenery for painting.

1. Paint the foam. Ok, so that sounds a little silly, I know. There are numerous problems with this method. Foam is not a durable surface, so this method is really only recommended when actors don�t touch the piece. It takes a few coats of paint to get any sort of opacity worth anything. Paint takes absolutely forever to dry on a foam surface, but then again, everything takes forever to dry on a foam surface. Priming the foam with oops or extra paint is cheaper than anything else you can do. As long as you understand the drawbacks, painting straight on the foam can save you a decent amount of money, and perhaps some time as well. For that reason, I have seen this method used most widely for short run productions.
2. Attach a new surface to the foam. This can be accomplished with an adhesive and some form of cloth or paper and the ideal method will depend on what you are trying to accomplish. For a rock wall, I think I would use tobacco cloth and Jaxsan. For a rustic wood I might use muslin and glue water, leaving in strategic wrinkles. If I want a really smooth surface, I might use muslin and glue water, but stretch and smooth it carefully, very much like muslin-covering a hard covered flat. Perhaps even newspaper and glue water would help give the surface more the texture and paintablility you desire. There are many more options here, but those are the ones I�ve seen work. For most theaters, this method provides the perfect balance between expense and durability. The product will look good, and is likely to hold up for the run of the show.
3. Use a sealer coat on the foam. There are all sorts of products out there that claim to seal foam one way or another. Sculpt or Coat and Foamcoat are two I�ve used. I find they provide slightly more durability than a few coats of paint. A roofing compound called Jaxsan 600 is also one I�ve used. Again these products will take a long time to dry on the foam, so plan on leaving it at least overnight after each coat.
4. Hard coat the foam- If you�re an amusement park or you need to keep this forever, you can have the foam hard coated. This is a yucky and toxic procedure that you really don�t want to deal with if you�re not completely set up for it, so you�d probably want to hire out to have it done by an expert. This solution is one for really long runs and fairly large budgets.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.