Ben Westlake- Snakes

For my research methodology project I chose to focus on snakes, as they are an animal that most people are not too fond of.
because of this I wanted to illustrate that in my opinion snakes are not all that bad which I ran with and was the basis for my my research trying to find things about snakes that they do well.

below are my two final outcome posters and two more of the process.

Parrots - Annabelle Scott

At the beginning of this project I wasn’t too sure how I was going to Illustrate my chosen animal as I have never really illustrated anything apart from people before. However I have, in the past, done projects based on colour and pattern for the human form. I decided that through my initial research of looking at the different species, I could incorporate this idea of colour and pattern into some small paintings of these birds. Parrots are themselves so colourful that creating some small colourful paintings was quite easy. However I felt these were too simple and not well thought out. I decided to do some secondary research at Bird World and get some first hand images of these birds.

After going to Bird World, I realised there was so much movement with these birds and trying to get precise and detailed drawings was never going to happen. I wanted a way to come up with quick, fun was of depicting the beautiful splashes of colour I saw when I saw them flying around in real life. I decided to use finger prints as this was a very quick and quirky way of showing off these birds who are quick and quirky themselves.

After coming up with my repeated patterns I decided to use them in a commercial way by creating some carton designs for tropical juice. I decided to go down this path as two of my key words to describe parrots were ‘Exotic’ and ‘Endangered’ and this way I could create some exotic juices and raise money for the organisations that are trying to help them. I am really glad I went down this path as I think it created some interesting final outcomes. I based all the information off other juice cartons that I bought from Tesco’s, I tried to include all the correct information and include fun facts so that it would look authentic.

These are my final cartons from this project. I think making the cartons was effective and each flavour together was unique and interesting to look at.

Lions - Louise Tagg

For my Research Methodology project, I chose to look at lions as I wanted to research an animal that I was interested in. I was inspired in this piece by mandala artwork such as Ben Kwok's work, which includes a lot of fine and repetitive detail, something I admire and love to work in myself, I wanted to put in my own interpretation and create an interesting and mesmerizing piece in fine liners.

As my project went on, I looked in depth into the well being of animals and the ways in which their lives can be influenced, especially by humans. This is a topic that I feel very passionate about for all animals, and the safety of lions became a very important and interesting subject matter for me. I used this passion to essentially create a campaign that advertised the lives of lions and inspire people to think about what humans do to lions and can do to help. I was inspired hugely by my research and wanted to show a clear and precise message as simply as possible. These two images along with one other, ultimately became my final pieces to demonstrate this topic.

Throughout the project, I also experimented with different media to find what worked for me and this topic, and to demonstrate the art of the lion in as many different ways as possible. This is a piece I completed, inspired by my own previous work that I had completed in the same media of black and white acrylic paint. This is a medium I am used to and love to use because of the layers I work in, making the piece enjoyable and my own.

Marine Iguana - Ştefan Munteanu

My project revolves around the majestic existence of marine iguanas. I consider these creatures an endless source of inspiration as they are dark, rough and they always seem eager for a bloody confrontation, when in fact they are masters of psychological warfare. I have depicted in my work below a scene where a battle of this kind takes place. The iguanas seem ready to jump at each other's throats, but it never comes to that. The two only stare each other in the eye until one bows its head and lays on the ground, surrendering and recognising the dominance of its opponent. I have illustrated the mental frequencies of the two iguanas engaged in a fight, and painted two golden halos as helmets to underline their attempt to stay immune to the other's mental attack.

This image consists of three separately drawn layers which I brought together using Photoshop, achieving my desired result. The buildings in the water represent the iguana's natural habitat from which it is brutally plucked by the sick man who desperately wanted to take a closer look at the creature.

I chose to bring the marine iguana to life by putting together a wire frame and covering it with wire dish sponges to represent its nervous system, as the iron conducts the low frequencies it needs in order to gain the upper hand and finally achieve dominance against its opponent.

Thank you for watching!

Dragonfly - Hannah Potter

For my project I chose to focus on the dragonfly; iridescent, shimmering, agile, delicate and stunning.

This 3D sculpture is from the workshop we did with MyDogSighs for #freeartfriday. We were asked to go out and pick up scraps of litter from outdoors, in order to create a new something. so I chose to create my dragonfly. Using bought wire for the body, and found sweet wrappers and bird feathers to make it resemble a dragonfly. The bolt things I found were perfect for the huge eyes of the insect.

I then proceeded to make a paper cut of some steampunk scene of a dragonfly, and then made a digital print of it, overlapping like the vision of a dragonfly would.

The vision of the dragonfly was the focus of my project in the end, they have over 30,000 lenses and so this is to illustrate their fragmented vision. I chose the red for the dove because it showed enemy and how the sky is so bright that everything else is clear, especially enemies.

My final piece for this project was a paper cut stained glass window. It is said that dragonflies see their top half of vision in oranges and greens and the bottom half in blues and purples. And so I infused this into my final piece.

Bees - Louise Cheatle

For my methodology project I chose to look at bees as I knew there would be lots of good starting points for research. I was also inspired by vintage insect poster charts and taxidermy. I chose to document the life cycle of a bee through research and print. I looked at each stage of a bees life, largely focusing on conservation towards the end of the project.

For the image above, I drew an image of a bee, then scanned it into photoshop so I could use it for screen printing. It was difficult to get the under layer in the correct place but I think it was down to printing issues from photoshop that made the alignment slightly off. Overall the prints came out very nicely!

Octopus - Roshahni Bowerman

For the research methodology project I focused on the Octopus. I was fascinated by their movement and how their arms flowed so elegantly. I loved finding things out, about their eight limbs; two of which are actually legs. I was really intrigued about tentacles because each one had a mind of it's own and in my opinion they looked weird yet wonderful. I found words that described an Octopus and from there it propelled my research further. 

I looked at words such as fluid, elegance, free-flowing and strange, all of which described the nature of an octopus when it moved. Going on from the words, I looked at each of their meanings and I found ballet. I found that the Octopus and ballet dancers have something very special in common with each other; they're elegant and move very gracefully, limbs moving in time with one and other.

I wanted to incorporate ballet into my work so I drew what it would look like if a ballerina had the tentacles of an Octopus. It looks rather strange yet it has a powerful effect on the viewer. Working on acetate allowed me to represent the similarities between the two. It also gave me a ghost-like image when held above the drawing I was developing. It's like the dancer is flailing her arms around much like an Octopus would do in the water.

My final piece was created with ink, watercolour and Promarker pen. The idea behind it was that the octopus can walk on two feet on the sea bed, it flails its arms around gracefully with fluid movements like a ballerina. When it moves under the water I'd like to think this is what they think of; like they're a dancer in training. 

The octopus dances and performs a pirouette and in the mirror she see's herself as a beautiful ballet dancer. 

Octopus- Rebeka Uramovszky

Rebeka Uramovszky - Octopus 

For the research methadology project i have directed my focus on octopus. I have found it amazing how they comouflage along with all the all of its incredible talents.

Fox - Nia Filipova

I chose to research a fox because it's an animal that has always appealed to me both visually and as a concept. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been told stories about the adventures of Kuma Lisa (a folk tale fox) and I wanted to concentrate my research towards her as a character. I decided however to look at other forms of literature inspired by the fox and found a poem about the urban fox which inspired me to do a continues line drawing.

Then I went on with researching and was inspired by the wisdom of the fox from the book The little Prince, so I did a quick ink piece. 

I loved how the fox looked like when done in this medium so I went back to the fox folk tales and researched more about them while making another ink piece showing how different the fox can be presented in literature. I found out that the animal can be seen as both a villain and a good guy. 

I had  noticed that in most of the folk tales, Kuma Lisa is usually in the company of Kumcho Vulcho which is a wolf character. It seemed that in every fairy tale they would either be best friends or enemies. I really liked that concept of a love-hate relationship between the two animals and decided to base my final piece on that, with again using ink, fine liner and watercolours. I found many quotes on love-hate relationships and combined the best ones to make up a text explaining the image. 

Bears - Elizabeth Moore

For the Research Methodology Unit I decided to look at a bears as they have always been an animal that I have found appealing and intriguing. I wanted to explore the more playful side to the bear as opposed to their wild nature, so I looked into children's stories and media that featured them. I looked at different Disney films including Brother Bear and Brave, but ended up focusing a lot on Winnie the Pooh. What interested me the most about Winnie the Pooh was how the whole story was based upon A.A.Milne's son's childhood toys; so I started to collect images from friend's and family's own childhood toys to create my own characters.

To do this I firstly did some character designs and developed them a little before drawing them up for my final piece. To make my images I used watercolour as a base and drew on top in fine liner, and then using a scalpel I cut out the bear shapes. I did this in several layers as experimentation but ended up liking the effect enough to use the bears as my final image. Lastly I scanned them in together to photoshop to adjust the colours a little and to edit the background; I ended up using several plain pastel coloured backgrounds as a small series for my final piece to complement the child-like theme I was going for.

Aye - Aye.

I chose to base the project around the Aye Aye because I found it to visually be very interesting, it has so many different adaptions and features which make it look cute at one angle and like a deformed gremlin in others.



Here I have captured the Aye Aye's beauty with the medium, scratch board I tried to show how complex it's facial structure is just by visualizing the hairs.



I chose to draw the Aye Aye's eyes as I felt they were very complex and interesting to capture. I was also studying all the strange things about the Aye Aye.

I did most of it with fineliners, Then added charcoal to add more depth and realistic qualities, fineliner is great for detail like hairs and most shading, but if I this case I found that just drawing the hairs and very dark areas with fineliners and then subtle and dark areas with the charcoal really works together to create images with lots of details but also with lots of depth.

Then finally I scanned it in and added the eyes colour using photoshop.



This is a promarker and fineliner illustration of a baby Aye Aye, it's eyes are black because it's a newborn and they haven't adjusted yet.


I chose this image finally because it's the image I used for my front cover which was part of my final piece.

I drew it using finliners and charcoal, trying to pay attention to every single hair to communicate how weird and scary this thing is!.

I then scanned it in to add the hand and eye colours in Photoshop.

Peacocks - Laura Ward

For the Research Methodology unit I decided to focus on peacocks. I chose this bird as I was already vaguely aware of their rich history and how much they have influenced culture and religion, so I thought they would make for a really interesting project. I separated my research into five words that I had collected from a survey asking participants to describe the personality of a peacock and produced a variety of work inspired by these descriptions. This poster (above) was based on the word 'protective' and shows peacocks 'watching their backs,' promoting their aggressive nature and tendencies to be protective towards themselves and other members of the muster. The peacock was firstly drawn out with black fine liner pen then duplicated and colored using Photoshop.

My research covered a lot of influence the peacock has on religion and its wide range of connotations with wealth, wisdom and dignity, especially in India where it is the national bird. I also learned about its highly political role in the National League of Democracy in Myanmar, and its use in impressive architecture such as the Peacock Room inside the now abandoned Sammezzanno Castle in Tuscany. Following this, I thought it would be interesting to take this powerful and iconic bird and contrast it combining them with the mundane lives and daily problems that we sometimes face as humans. Therefore, I created a series of cartoons throughout my project depicting the bird facing such problems as loneliness, which was also a product of the fidelity research I covered exploring how the bird can sometimes die from lack of companionship, providing a really refreshing view on the bird.



After looking into their famous connotations with flamboyance I decided to create a poster that showed peacocks celebrating their appearance with a proud attitude. This poster uses the 'P' section of a dictionary page as the background, then layered with my fine liner drawing once again with the text 'Bird Like Me.' It would have improved the effect of the poster to include the peacock's plumage but I felt that it crowded the image with so many peacocks layered onto one another and it would have created large spaces of block colour, which I felt was more damaging to the overall image.



For my final design, I produced a lino print of a peacock's portrait, printed with black ink, then transferred onto Photoshop to add color adjustments and text. I felt that the peacock's most striking and significant attribute, like with many organisms, is their passion for survival. I aimed to express this passion with the bold use of red, contrasting it with black to encourage a feeling of danger around the bird. What is most surprising is how they have adapted their bodies to withstand short distances of flight in order to hide in trees for safety during rest periods, despite carrying a plumage that is almost half its entire length and contains over 200 feathers. They maintain a perfect balance of personal safety, making them one of the most successful survivors of the bird kingdom.

Pine Marten

For my research methodology project I decided to look at the Pine Marten. Pine Martens are shy, nocturnal animals that have been extinct from England since the 18th century due to hunting and deforestation. They are still found in Scotland and Ireland and in recent years have been reintroduced to Wales. My research started off with looking at the conservation of these animals and the efforts that are being taken into reintroducing them to Wales and possibly England.

During my research I looked at if the Pine Marten had any myths or legends behind it and found very few, but I did find some Native American creation stories that involved the Pine Marten. Pine Martens are seen within Native American beliefs as a brave warrior and protector especially with the Ojibwe/ Ojibway who had a clan named after it, which had their warriors, builders and strategists in.

One of the stories really stood out to me, Pine Marten's quest for Moon's Daughter, in the story different animals are trying to become Moon's daughters suitors, but to do this they have to pass Moon's challenges. Pine Marten is the only one who completes the first challenge and goes on to the others. The part of the story that caught my attention was the ending were Moon is sent into the sky by Pine Marten were he becomes the Moon. As the original story is a direct translation of  a spoken tale there are quite a few sentences that don't make sense in English. After having a tutorial with Karen Anne we discussed about transfiguring and rewriting the story to fit Irish animals and making it into a children's story book.

My new version of the story went through lots of changes and versions. I made it so Pine Marten is the protagonist of the story whilst Moon is the antagonist, as in the original both of them seemed to be as bad as each other with no messages of good. I made it so the story showed how much Pine Marten loved moon's daughter (Kyna), and how he would do any number of challenges to be able to marry her. In the end during a challenge pine marten is exhausted and fed up and sends Moon into the sky.

For the double page spreads I made thumbnails of every scene and picked three to illustrate along with a map for the index papers. When designing the characters for the story I got a bit carried away and did roughs of all the characters involved, so I used them and made them into a page introducing the characters to go at the start of the book. I did all of my drawings in black fine liner and scanned them into Photoshop were I then coloured them and added in the text.

Rat - Jakub Marjanski

I decided to follow the Rat for the project, the reason I took the rat is because the idea of an animal that represents pestilence fascinated me. I instantly jumped to looking at the disgusting side of rats and found that the animal is actually quite clean. I had to look quite hard to find pictures of sewer rats and diseased ones on the streets of New York city. Eventually I collected a range of images that I sketched out.

With that I went on to look up the pestilence part of this project. I looked at depictions of gods and concepts such as the 4 riders of the apocalypse. In my search I found the black death and that it came in 3 different versions that plagued different parts of the world. I decided to make that my main theme.

With that discovery I decided that I should depict the disease moving from one place to the other like it did. In a tutorial I was informed of concertina books, their long length were perfect for the subject.

Final Piece

The final piece was made with 3 cellulose thinner prints of works I have done in my book, each representing the location where black death happened. The in-between parts are transitions made with a Graphite pencil (I also went over the prints with it to make them darker and feel like an old painting). The band around the book was made with a map to add to the travel aspect and the actual book is made with Fabriano paper. It's missing text that was meant to accompany the images but I didn't have enough time to add them to the piece.

The first image represents the Byzantine empire, second Europe and last China.