Else van den Hooven- Ostrich

I wanted to research an animal that I knew little of beforehand. The ostrich is an animal, which many people don't really think of and most of all don't understand. It's rarely a favourite animal, but after this project it became one of mine. Ostriches are known for buring their heads in the sand, which means avoiding danger. "Human ostriches" always avoid problems. This is one thing I wanted to set right, because the Ostrich is that one animal that does not avoid any danger. Instead they are very extrovert, protective, and great fighters. On top of that they are not afraid to show what they are capable of. Additionally it never really had an important position through history; yes, the feathers were used in fashion, but the ostrich itself was far in the background. Also they have been walking on earth longer then most animals, which should give the animals more power, but sadly it did not.  Through my research work I wanted to give the ostrich the position it deserves. My five words were Nomadic, Survivor, Protective, Curious and Extrovert. I worked alot with symbolism & patterns within this project, and I explored the extrovertness with Op art and Pop art. For my final product I made a A1 poster.

Photoshop 

screenprint

                                                                   design in Photoshop & Illustrator

Balloon Snake - My Dog Sighs Workshop

I created this piece in a Level 4 workshop with a visiting artist called My Dog Sighs, where we had to collect a piece of rubbish from the street and then turn it into something new, placing it back where we found it afterwards. I created this snake from an old balloon, using the remaining stick to create a body and head and then using the remains of the balloon to create the snake's tongue.

Hannah Lewington - Wolverine

For the Research Methodology project, I decided to look at the Wolverine as it had not been done before and it is relatively unknown to most people (apart from the Marvel character from X-Men). The Wolverine is an elusive animal that lives in Canada, Norway, Finland, Russia and some states in America. It is an animal that has little known about it due to the fact that they're constantly on the move, travelling up to 20km a day to scavenge for food. They have been known to take down prey much larger than them such as caribou and even polar bears, with a similar ferocity to its African cousin the Honey Badger.

I decided to focus on the Wolverine's paws in particular for this project due to their sheer size compared to the size of the Wolverine itself. This then became part of exploring the idea of the Wolverine's journey every day in search of food. I therefore created a variety of works incorporating this concept, using a 1:1 scale throughout.

Illustrated Menagerie - SPACE Gallery 2015

George Hinchliffe - Tree Frog lighter

Made as part of level 4's "My Dog Sighs" workshop, this green lighter found discarded among the hedges longed for something more, to become a "Red eyed tree frog" and with a little bit of paint and cardboard his dream came true, jumping back out into world a beautiful (all be it flammable) little frog.

Little Monster

My Dog Sighs Workshop

An empty cigarette packet found flung into a park, transformed into a little chomping monster who was soon returned to his home for someone else to discover.

Grizzly Bear - Octavia Herdson

My chosen animal was the brown bear or grizzly bear as they're more commonly known as.

To me these creatures are incredible, their strength and power is phenominal as is their will to protect their young and their territory.

 After a lot of research I discovered people either described bears as fearsome or cuddly.

However I have come to realise that both of these are in fact wrong; the bear is simply misunderstood. It's a wild animal and should be respected. So I decided to make an animation of a two-faced coin spinning with both the fearsome and cuddly side of the bear, to illustrate 'misunderstood' in this context.

'There's what you expect a bear to do and then there's what a bear does. Sometimes the two don't match up"