Costume Drawing, Augustus by Van Broughton Ramsey

Name: Costume Drawing, Augustus | Artist: Van Broughton Ramsey Media: Pencil, ink, watercolor & white gouache on manila card | Year(s): 1988 — **Van Broughton Ramsey** | *Costume Drawing, Augustus* | 1988 | Pencil, ink, watercolor & white gouache on manila card | The Wittliff Collections, Alkek Library, Texas State University

About the Work

Costumes provide a quick visual cue for film viewers to draw assumptions about a character. For instance, the character Gus was a more friendly and outgoing man than his partner Call. To contrast Gus with the more stoic Call, costume designer Van Broughton Ramsey dressed Gus in tans and browns.

Ramsey remembers “[Robert] Duvall trusted us, there was a scene in the book where he went into town and bought a black suit to go visit Clara, [but] we made him a brown one . . . . He took one look at it and said ‘It’s not black,’ then he thought for a minute and said, ‘but it wouldn’t be.’ And he wore the brown suit.”

Costume designer Van Broughton Ramsey won an Emmy Award for his work on Lonesome Dove.