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.

Shakespeare's Animals Exhibition

We are very excited to have now installed a new group exhibition piece for Shakespeare's Animals, part of the upcoming Much Ado about Portsmouth Festival (maap.port.ac.uk) marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.

The work is a large scale group student piece and depicts some of the (over 4000!) animals which Shakespeare alluded to in his writings and will be gracing one wall of the Portsmouth Guildhall's Freda Swain room from now until 7th June 2016. During that time, Portsmouth Cultural Trust tells us, thousands of visitors will be able to see and read about the work and the students, and we hope, through coming to this blog, be able to give us feedback too. We think the diversity and talent of our first year students is well represented in this group show, as well as the explorative and questioning approach to illustration which is central to the BA (Hons) Illustration course here at Portsmouth.

We will also have the chance to celebrate with an opening event on Friday April 22nd at 6pm - 7.45 in the Guildhall, Freda Swain room. Please let us know if you'd like to come along!