Lucy Page - Tiger

For the Shakespeare project I decided to research tigers as I find them really interesting and mysterious. The quotes from Shakespeare's work that inspired me were first 'The tiger was generally considered the personification of remorseless cruelty' and second 'Even the rudest and the most heraldic of a tiger must have had stripes not spots'. During my research I looked at how tigers hunt and especially how they pounce. I discovered that tigers are extremely powerful animals, the largest of the cat family and very distinctive due to their stripes. Because of this they are the perfect killing machine and I decided to run with this description for inspiration for my final outcome.

I was attempting to capture the powerful roar of a tiger with this drawing

I created a lino print from the first image and printed it successfully 

Stripes are one of the most identifying characteristics of a tiger, so I experimented with just painting the stripes 

I started looking at how tigers are killing machines, to show this I used cogs to create a half tiger half machine outcome

Final outcome: 

For my final piece I chose to use my drawing of a tiger crouching ready to pounce with cogs added to its upper leg muscles to show the pent up power in the muscles.

After the fire had gone out, I made a small phoenix and painted it in the traditional colours a phoenix would feature. I placed it behind the burnt wire as a symbol of the phoenix starting a new life. the reason why the phoenix can live forever as it was not tempted by Eve to eat fruit from the tree God forbid, therefore it was granted to live forever.

For my animal, I had chosen the phoenix because I wanted to choose a mythical animal to give myself more space to imagine what I could create.

At first I had tried to cover my phoenix wire model with hairspray and then set it on fire. However it didn't work at all due to the weather conditions, even though there was hardly any wind it was still difficult to set alight despite spraying a lot of hairspray onto the wire. But then I wrapped the wire with tissue and then set it alight with BBQ fluid.

After painting on BBQ fluid onto the wire phoenix model it set alight almost instantly and burned extremely well. I wanted to set my work on fire as this is the moment when the phoenix would be reborn, setting itself on fire from its old age. The phoenix was said to have lived for one thousand years before it would set itself alight.

Shakespeare's Animals - At the Guildhall, Portsmouth 2016

Josie Keable - Walrus

For my Shakespearean animal, I focused on walruses. This was mainly because they're quite an odd animal, and you don't really see or hear much about them so I figured it'd be interesting to find out more. I found out they had quite a high spiritual profile for the people of the Arctic and mainly focused on this aspect within my work, as there wasn't much related to Shakespeare other than a description of what they looked like. I eventually started looking at Act 4 Scene 1 of Macbeth and started playing round with the idea of the witches wearing walrus themed masks. From these masks I started making colourful animated gifs to bring back the idea of spirituality and Shamanic rituals. Eventually I delved into the idea of these animated walrus masks being like a sort of alternative 'God' for people in a post apocalyptic world and made another, much longer, animated gif from this.

An initial drawing, exploring spirituality

The first gif I made, only changing the eyes

Another gif.

Final outcome.

The two figures are part of this 'walrus' religion and bow down to the masks

(This doesn't continually loop)

Georgie Underwood- Dragon

I decided to focus on the dragon as my Shakespeare animal, as I am interested in fantasy as a genre. Dragons have always intrigued me, due to their importance in some modern cultures, as  well as in classic mythology and legends. With this in mind, I researched what 'dragon' meant, as a word and as a creature; the main focus though, was how the animal is portrayed in Shakespeare. The Shakespeare quotes that I chose to explore, were "sparkling eyes"(King Henry VI, Act 1, Scene 1) and "come not between a dragon and his wrath"(King Lear, Act 1, Scene 1). To portray this, I looked at why a dragon would be wrathful; researching this idea, I found that the main reason for a dragons anger, would be when gold is stolen from its treasure hoard.  I decided to experiment further, thinking of ways of how to illustrate the idea of a dragons eyes being "sparkling" whilst also showing a picture of destruction and anger. The result of this, was an image of a village burning as the dragon watches- implying that the dragon was seeking revenge on whoever stole his gold.

Experiment with scraper foil

Adapting the final outcome on Photoshop, by removing some of the clarity and changing the colour.

Final outcome
The dragon watches over the destruction it has caused.
This piece shows the result of the dragons wrath- a village being burnt to the ground.

Second Final outcome
I decided to create a secondary outcome, that works almost as a 'prequel' to my final outcome.
This piece shows the human in the midst of the dragon's hoard, waking the beast after having stolen gold.