acters in a play. The cool colors, blue, green, and violet, usually suggest calmness and quietness. Old characters should probably be costumed in cool colors, as a rule, to suggest that the emotional fires of youth have burned down in them. Remember, also, that neighboring colors suggest harmony and friendship, while complementary colors indicate conflict and struggle. The color wheel will prove very helpful to the nonprofessional designer. An example of thoughtful costume designing may be found in a set of designs made for "The Tempest." In this play there are really three groups of characters: (1) Prospero, his daughter Miranda, and her lover Ferdinand; (2) King Alonso, and his group of courtiers who are shipwrecked upon Prospero's Island; and (3) the comic characters, Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban. For the first group, cool colors are obviously appropriate, representing the innocence and idyllic calmness of the love story. Prospero, however, must be made severe and dignified; he was dressed in black trimmed with gold-yellow. Miranda's dress was a quiet yellow, and Ferdinand wore a royal blue. So that these costumes should harmonize, both were tipped a little towards green: that is, Miranda's yellow is a slightly green-yellow, and Ferdinand's blue a green-blue. The basic color of the Alonso group was a red-purple: representing both the evil passion of the group and the royalty of the court group. All the courtiers were dressed in varying shades of red and purple. The most prominent ones wore the brightest colors, which were "cooled" by the addition of green for old Gonzalo, the good and aged councilor of

the king. There was no element of monotony about these costumes, for remember that each color contains in itself an infinite variety. Orange was chosen as the basic color for the comic group: Stephano wore a bright orange costume, Trinculo an orange red and yellow made like the conventional fool's costume, and Caliban an orange brown. Ariel, as a character quite detached from any of the groups, wore varying costumes of different colors, dependent upon the disguise he was for the moment assuming. Thus, color was made to symbolize the characters, and to distinguish them from one another.

Line in Costume Design

Line is the second important element. About all that can be said in this connection is that long straight lines give the effect of dignity and seriousness, sharp curves and circles suggest lightness and comedy, and jagged lines and angles suggest grotesqueness and excitement. In a costume, up and down lines usually give the effect of tallness and slimness; while cross lines add breadth to a figure. Careful designers consider the silhouette of the costumes, and say that each character should have a distinct silhouette as well as a distinct color.

MAKING COSTUME PLATES

The Costume Plate as a Representation of an Idea Just as a stage model is the best method of designing a setting, so a set of costume plates is the best

method for designing costumes. It is not at all necessary to be an accomplished artist to make a set of plates. Any one who has sufficient ability to select costumes for a play has enough ability to make plates, which are only a graphic representation of ideas. They need not be, and in fact should not be, a set of pictures. They need not be finished drawings in any way. They should be merely a representation of the desired line and color. A beautiful set of drawings may be a very bad costume plate, while a bad set of drawings may be a good costume plate. The actual execution of the design on paper is very unimportant. It is the ideas represented that count.

The Process

There are three steps in the process of costume designing, and they can be learned by the youngest student: (1) sketch the figure on which the costume is to be drawn, (2) draw the outline of the costume, and (3) indicate the colors with paints, just as children fill in sketches for paper dolls. Of course, there will be a preliminary step, which is really the most important one of all, that of visualizing the costumes. Just as in designing scenery, the artist must read and reread the play until he knows the characters. Perhaps he will need to do some studying of costume books, if the play calls for historic costume. But after his ideas become clear to him, he must try to make them clear to others by putting them on paper.

1. Sketching the Figures.-It is a simple matter to learn to sketch the figures on which the costumes are