Scarabaeidae; Celestial Navigators - Lucy Bertram

Beginning the Research



Extract from the 'Dictionary of Symbols' and watercolour studies

I chose to study the insect family by the name of Scarabaeidae, or most commonly known as the Scarab family. This is a family of beetles that makes up around 10% of all insects and therefore is incredibly wide spread. Some of the most common beetles under the Scarabaeidae term are Dungbeetles, Cockchafers and even the so called 'Thunder bugs' which are drawn to incredibly bright colours during summer. I was fascinated by this super family and began my research by finding a dictionary definition of 'Scarab' and exploring a few different ways to portray the most widely known type of scarab. Within my research, one thing that would crop up every few passages was their connection to the ancient Egyptians, whom believed that the Scarabs had eternal life, reincarnated through the balls of dung they would roll. They were often depicted in images laced with gold and therefore I chose to do the same thing, use golden paint to highlight certain areas of their bodies.



Acrylic paintings with Liquid Leaf golden highlights

Celestial Navigation



Watercolour and salt painting. Liquid leaf golden highlights

After completing some further research by contacting Entomologist, Moya Burns, I discovered that this super family had the ability to Navigate using the stars, which is something that utterly fascinated me. I researched how we, as humans could achieve the same thing. Scarabs navigate differently to us, they are able to do so using the milky way but, we as humans rarely have strong enough eyes to do this without technical support.

Developing the Final Piece

During a tutorial I realised that the thing I wanted to depict about these creatures was my fascination with their navigation skills, this brought me to the Victorian circus posters which often promised the experience to see something never seen before, something spectacular, when in reality the shows weren't as exciting as promised. I felt the same about these Scarabs, they had an amazing ability but, if faced with one, it would be far smaller than expected and probably wouldn't move whilst you were there. I wanted to use this to my advantage and set out to produce an A2 poster that promised grandeur.

The Final Piece



Final A2 poster.

The final piece was completed in 4 different stages, the painting of the actual base, the adding in of the celestial chart through photoshop, the printing onto an A2 sheet and then the addition of the golden paint. Almost entirely central in this piece is the star Polaris which is the brightest and most northern point in our skies within the northern hemisphere. The gold bands around the scarabs shell represent the equator which separates the northern and southern hemisphere so that there is no confusion about whether the two constellations (which represent how we, as humans can navigate using the night sky) are connected to one another.

Fish - Micky Orchard

During my Research Methodology project, my work focused on fish. In my opinion, fish are very interesting for various reasons, such as their colourful and shiny scales, and the incredibly diverse shapes and sizes they come in, ranging from a great white shark, to the tiny goby, which is about the size of your finger nail. Starting off, I began looking at the anatomy and biology of fish. I did this by drawing visually diverse fish species, such as the thin mackerel, or the blob like trunk fish. I also researched different types of fish scale, and researched how their gills work. In short, they take in water into their gills, then oxygen is extracted from the water, then flushed back out.  

After the first tutorial, I began researching a lot more things in relation to fish. I also had the opportunity to experiment with a wide range of materials, such as the Wacom Cintiq, a graphics tablet where you can draw directly onto the screen. The Wacom Cintiq tablet is a piece of equipment that really interests me as a wannabe digital painter. During the project I created various illustrations using this tablet, such as the image below, a visual experiment from my research into skittish fish behavior. It is inspired by the African Trout, which are known as particularly skittish fish, due to the abundance of predators in Africa, such as cormorants, otters and humans. 

In order to explore new research methodologies, I created a survey which I shared online for other people to answer. I used the survey to get peoples opinions on a range of topics regarding fish. From the survey I came to the conclusion that most people only really cared about fish in terms of food and keeping as a pet. Some stated they were important as they keep the marine environment clean. Therefore from the survey, I wanted to further explore themes of marine ecology and the effects of water pollution. I wanted to make something visually communicative that might take the appearance of a visual metaphor and subtly shock people about the impact of water pollution.

The most interesting of my five words i researched were "Struggling" and "Diversity". An article from Credo told me how pollution was responsible for an alarmingly high amount of fish species extinction. Below is one of the visual experiments from the five word methodology, an image that shows both fish diversity, and the struggle of water pollution, represented by the littered pattern on the fish and how fish are having to adapt to these polluted environments and die due to mutations or habitat loss.

With this I found something I wanted to communicate. After researching all of my words, I decided to take what I had learned from these two further. That water pollution is heavily affecting marine ecology and is responsible for reducing diversity in fish species, as most species are dying out. After evaluating multiple ideas I decided to create a communicative sculpture which would act as a visual metaphor and communicate to people how drastically pollution is affecting marine ecology and the diversity of fish species.

The sculpture itself is made up of a slate base, and an arch made from two driftwood pieces. I added both natural and unnatural elements to the sculpture, to show how the ecosystem is drastically changing due to pollution, such as shells, barnacles, fishing wire and glass. The sculpture itself communicates the effects on the ecosystem well, however the two aluminum fish communicate the effect of pollution on fish diversity and biology well. There are only two fish, and both are made of the same materials, and are exactly the same shape. This subtly communicates how fish have to adapt to the pollution, as well as visually representing a lack in diversity, again due to pollution. The fact that they are made of cider cans communicates fish mutation, which I learned about from a Credo article, which is one of the key reasons why diversity is decreasing, fish are mutating and dying due to their polluted waters. I hope that my sculpture will bring this to people's attention and shock them about the frightening truth. 

The Human - Sam Hely

I decided to be a little different with this project and look into the animal of a human, which is under the umbrella classed as a mammal.
The specific area I decided to look into was that of the brain and how different people can behave in different ways compared to others.  I began by looking in the general structure of the human skull.

This is a charcoal and chalk drawing I produced to represent the skull.

After this point I began to look into the idea of how a murderers brain could be potentially different to that of a person who has not committed a murder, so from here I started exploring the concept of forensic science, in particular, the use of a fingerprint detection.

So from this point I decided that to try and back up the idea of using finger prints, I needed to try this myself.  Using a few different mediums to get the best possible fingerprint print, this image was using the media of lino block ink.

From here i began to explore the idea that there are many films which would include the thoughts of murderers and films that contain murderers, this is where I entered the print room and created an etch.

The etch was from the film A Nightmare on Elm Street and I decided to try and recreate the hand of Freddy Kruger, the infamous dream killer.

My final image comes from the inspiration taken from a workshop with My Dog Sighs.  During the workshop i created a doll that had been savagely attacked, but was left hanging with a suicide note, which left it on a cliffhanger as to whether he committed suicide or was in fact murdered.

After drawing the image into a scratch board, I then uploaded the image into Photoshop and inverted the image and coloured the eyes to try and make the drawing a little more life like.

Tegan Meredith - Research Methodology - The Hedgehog

For my Research Methodology project I wanted to research hedgehogs. I found them quite gentle creatures that feature often in children's stories as well as being one of the most recognisable woodland creatures in our British wildlife.

                                         

('The Fox and the Hedgehog' stop motion animation I created with Helena Sepehr)

Through thorough research I discovered that the hedgehog is declining quickly in population due to many environmental factors, including fatal attacks from predators.

                                                 

(Created using Charcoal and Adobe Photoshop)

Hedgehogs are vulnerable animals that are only armored by their spines. I wanted to look into how hedgehogs are protected as well as how they are seen in children's story books . This lead me to look into fairy tales and how the Enchanted forest is a place where the vulnerable, innocent character gets lost and found again. 

(Pastel drawing of my interpretation of the Brother's Grimm fairy tale, Hans My Hedgehog)

(Etching of a hedgehog and his Uncanny shadow)

I was inspired by the work of Tim Burton and Dave Mckean to create illustrations that narrate the Uncanny and fear that the hedgehog faces in a world where they are weak, and may perhaps be seen as an unusual creature alone in a frightening habitat.

(Final Piece created from acrylic paint print, clay sculpture, photography and Adobe Photoshop)