Workshop with Los Dave

Earlier this week Los Dave worked with the first years to explore the movement and balance of the animals being studied in our current unit 'Research Methodology' and express it in found materials, (namely barbecue grills, wire, sticks and string) He outlined an initial modelling technique using Blu Tac to capture the movement in 3 dimensions, before developing it using the intended media.

For more info on Los Dave see www.losdave.bigcartel.com

My Dog Sighs workshop

This week there has been a really inspiring workshop run by My Dog Sighs about upcycling a piece of found flotsam and jetsam and reworking it into a character and returning it to where it was found to fend for itself. Many of the first years developed animal characters from their found piece - we are looking forward to seeing the photographs taken of them back in the place they were found.

For more info about the man behind the workshop see; mydogsighs.co.uk

Illustrated Menagerie Exhibition

Interview with the University News.

Watch an interview with three final year students exhibiting in the Menagerie. 

Illustrated Menagerie Exhibition

The posters and leaflets for the exhibition have been designed and produced by our final year students Dale Silvester, Paige Jones and Ollie Tubb and hand screen printed in the print workshop. Big thanks to all of you involved and for your highly professional approach.

Meet all the artists involved in the exhibition at this Friday's opening event in Space gallery - Eldon Building, Winston Churchill Avenue, Portsmouth PO1 2DJ

See more of the event and reserve a place here;

Call for Submissions - Illustrated Menagerie Exhibition

We would like to invite you to submit artwork for our upcoming exhibition: 'Illustrated Menagerie’. The Illustrated Menagerie project itself  is coming up to its 5th birthday now and will be holding an exhibition of Illustrated Menagerie works, to which we would like to invite you to submit some work. Deadline for submission is Monday 15th December.

If you would be interested in this please find the exhibition brief and all relevant details. Feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. We look forward to hearing from you!

Crocodiles

For this unit I looked into crocodiles and how their society operates. I found out that it functions in a strict hierarchical manner and wanted to look into illustrating this. I decided to look at how it might relate to human behaviours which also demonstrate social tiers, so I was thinking about social satire which gives commentary on these behaviours (such as Spiegelman's "Maus"). My final illustration is in ink - similar to the styles of a lot of satirical cartoonists. It involves a lot of crocodiles parodying human behaviours, and also includes a small reference to a myth about crocodiles that I briefly looked into.

The Gorilla

I chose to look at these ground-dwelling herbivores because they are powerful and intelligent. They live in social groups and often display gentle, human-like behaviour. Some able to learn basic sign language and communicate with humans. Would you believe 1 gorilla has the strength of 4-8 human men. It's incredible feats like these that made me want to study this magnificent creature. It's just a terrible shame that some species of gorilla are still endangered today. 

Tiger

I picked the Tiger for this project as they have long been one of my favourite animals, being such a feared and respected hunter, and also the mascot to my Rugby team. I used a mixture of mediums throughout the course of the project, but really wanted to reflect the areas where the Tiger can be found, namely China, Asia and Eastern Russia. But after discovering the Chinese governments dual policy of both protecting and hunting these graceful animals, I wanted to represent them as the product that China seems to think they are. So I tried my hand at some Chinese paintings and some came out better than others, but I did include the bar code logo to reflect the commercial use of these beautiful creatures.

Blue Footed Booby

For my research methodology I picked the blue footed booby. I was interested by this creature firstly because of its name and vibrant blue foot and then after some research its funky mating dance it uses to attract partners.

White Tailed Deer

For my research methodology project I have chosen to base it on white tailed deers. The reason why I have chosen this animal is because I was interested in their white spotted fur. I also find it interesting how only the baby deers have white spotted fur as when they grow older most deers lose their spots. Most of my illustrations for this project were penciled based sketches.      

                                                             Pencil, white ink and glitter

                                                       White pen, colour pencil and sketching

Paper cutting of Bambi

Seahorses

For my Research Methodology project, I was watching a documentary about sea animals and at one point they said that seahorses are the only animals that the male gets to give birth and I thought that that is really unique, at that point I realised that this is the animal I was going to use for my project. After long researches I found out that seahorses are really powerful and smart animals.

Peacocks

For my Research Methodology project, I focused on peacocks as they are an interesting male bird of the peafowl species to look in to. I have noted that many meanings come with this colourful bird. Its form is also interesting to look at and its tail can be seen to look like eyes and is used for a number of things.

Foxes

For my Research Methodology project, I focused on foxes - due to the fact that where I live in Portsmouth, you can witness a vast amount of foxes in the night. I personally like the mysterious aura around these nocturnal mammals and so I wished to research into them further. Throughout the project, I looked at the stereotypical characteristics that foxes have within society where they are seen as cunning and malicious, however when I looked into other societies across the world, such as Japan, I saw that they are portrayed to be gods, either being extremely malevolent like in our society, or being seen as immensely benevolent and wise. The concept of the foxes traits being at two opposite ends of the spectrum intrigued me and so, the majority of my project was concentrated on the kitsune - the Japanese fox - and the Japanese tales surrounding it (such as the fact that the majority of Japanese tales show foxes to only transform into females in order to bewitch men).

The illustration above was supposed to portray the malevolent side of the fox in terms of the colour codes of the female fox's robes whereas the images below show the benevolent fox where the colours are more welcoming. The digital drawing to the right shows an incomplete shrine in the background which I wished to finish because it showed that the female fox would've been worshipped dearly and would have backed up the fact that it is a loving god rather than a malicious one.