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.