Ross Hughes - Owls

Owls always seem to be there in the background, when I chose to do them for my project I started to see them appear on a lot of things, mainly as cute little patterns. This inspired me to do create a patter of my own, I drew them by hand and then clean them up and duplicated the owls in Illustrator. I then looked into owl myths and found a creature in one Native American tribe called Stikini who are sinister monsters from Seminole folklore. Originally they were evil witches, who transformed themselves into owl-beings. By day they still resemble people, but by night, they vomit up their souls and become undead owl-monsters that feed on human hearts. With this in mind I thought that comics are the modern day myths so I turned this monster into a anti-hero and a comic cover and the cowl he wears. The felt owl was made as a children's toy, its head turns all the way around to try and help them sleep at night as owls were seen to ward off omens.

Georgia Down - Japanese Flying Squid

For this project I chose to look into the Japanese Flying Squid. I always found squids fascinating, mysterious and totally unique, so I chose them for this project. I experimented with printing with actual squid corpses, which was a unique experience that yielded some interesting results (see below). I also wanted to create cute, childish squids - away from the colossal monsterous creatures like the Kraken that typically spring to mind (see below). For my final I chose to hand bind a concentina book focused around solving the mysterious nature of the Japanese Flying Squid. I wanted it to be broken up into basic factoids but impossible to read for the average consumer - so I wrote it in Japanese in homage to the squids home land. It was all done in ink (to represent the squids ink, of course!), which I smudged a lot. If I were to go back and change my outcome, I would have pushed that smudging more and made the final product much more weathered and aged. (See below).
I also took part in a 'My Dog Sighs' workshop which included me painting a piece of rubbish and discarding it - I took a picture of my piece where I found it originally!

Joseph Gardner - Mouse

For my Research Methodology project I chose to look at the mouse. For no simpler reason than my house was somehow infested with them, which is more common than I realised in Portsmouth. My project started when I caught a mouse in my kitchen. I tried to replicate this mouse with the wire workshop we had early in the project. After this I spent a lot of time working continuous line drawings of mice. In the Los Dave workshop I partnered up to create a owl-mouse crossover, I found this very successful as I was able to work on a larger scale than that of a mouse. After much development I decided on the idea of a Mouse in a tin can, they are renowned for going into cupboards and rummaging for food - and after the influence of My Dog Sighs I found the use of tin cans as very appropriate. I have chosen to add my Joint project from the Los Dave workshop.

 

These are some of the pictures from my Fox project. I like them because this was my first attempt at using stop motion animation to make a short animation of my own. 

Kemani Batt - My Dog Sighs level 4 Workshop

This is the work I created for our Le Dog Sighs workshop. We went looking for a discarded piece of rubbish to bring to life for the project, and then leave it out in the world for people to find.

I created a small crocodile out of a broken peg and painted a face inside a tissue box.

Vicente O'Neill- My Dog Sighs Level 4 work Shop

Local Portsmouth street artist 'My Dog Sighs' came to deliver a lecture to us on how and why he produces his unique pieces of found 'rubbish' art. Quirky and uplifting, his realistic paintings on cans and crisp wrappers are a delight to look at. We were then instructed to create our own piece of art with a piece of rubbish we found. After completing the painting we had to then replace it where we originally found them, leaving the pieces of art to the mercy of the world.
Here is my own response:

Emily Carleton - Tiger

For my project I decided to focus on tigers as I've always had a fascination with them. Their characteristics such as their markings and love of water make them unique creatures. I found it interesting to learn from my research that tigers have always been both feared and revered throughout history, and subsequently they are often associated with royalty and power. This therefore became my focus towards the end of the project.