Welcome to the Shakespearean Menagerie - Shakespeare's Animals

Today the Illustrated Menagerie was interviewed by Hannah Sperring, Creative writing student at the University of Portsmouth, who's now penned an exciting piece about our involvement in the upcoming festival in Portsmouth celebrating all things Shakespeare; Much Ado about Portsmouth. We have a number of things in the pipeline for exploring animals this year with this new focus of how Shakespeare himself employed their characteristics to describe characters in his plays.

Our remit ordinarily involves illustrating animals which are actually living and breathing, but this year we will embrace the mythical and legendary creatures also to try to capture some of the range of the creatures which featured in plays and sonnets penned four hundred (plus) years ago.

We are also lucky enough to have been offered a very exciting opportunity to exhibit of some of the work as a group student show, in the Freda Swain room at Portsmouth Guildhall.

Exhibition Dates: 12 March - 7 June 2016 

Much Ado!

The Illustrated Menagerie is now dipping its toes into the writings of Shakespeare for inspiration to work with, as part of the upcoming Much Ado About Portsmouth Festival (see maap.port.ac.uk for more details)

Portsmouth-based festival events marking the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death. The festival will run from the 18th to the 23rd April 2016 (culminating on the day of Shakespeare's death).

Kerry Thompson- Rats

For my Methodology project my chosen animal was a rat. I chose a Rat as I found a rat is a well-known species commonly found around the world and imbedded within different cultures. Often thought of in a negative way, which I felt left room for a wide variety for visual interpretation. For my final piece I focused around my key five words I chose to describe my animal, I created a picture book with photography from local locations to best match each word and simulate a sense of journey throughout the book.

                                                                     My Final Piece

                                                                   Stop Motion animation

Faris Kamal - Raven

The animal that I choose for my research methodology is raven. I’m always been fascinated in these creature, as they have raised so many myths and legends about them. It has sleek, black feathers also very nifty in terms of surviving in the wilds. That is why I’m interested in researching on that particular animal. I’ve never seen ravens in real life until I came to Portsmouth where I get to study and observe it. I made some wire mesh of raven with two different type of metal wire, each giving a different look. The last picture, I was experimenting on photography on a raven sculpture that I made and have some fun taking pictures of it.

Alice Dillon Great White Sharks

Alice Dillon - Great White Sharks

For my Research Methodology Project I decided to do Great White Sharks, as they are very fierce and scary creatures but also very misunderstood.  I looked into the history of shark evolution, biology of the shark, films such as jaws, shark attacks and the mistreatment of sharks. There are lots of continuous line drawing is this project to get a feel of movement for the sharks. For my final piece I decided to do a stop frame animation about a shark's monster fin which was inspired by the shark finning industry. 

 

The My Dog Sighs-Workshop

A Screen Shot from my final piece

Olivia Trangmar Jellyfish

Into the Methodology unit I wanted to study jellyfish! Researching them were fascinating, the six words that I chose were Evil, Colourful, Electric, Neon, Glowing and Graceful. For my final piece I looked at Colourful, my final piece a motion colourful shot of a Jellyfish. I wanted to get a sense of movement. I also used the colour pink to emphasise the gentle side of Jellyfish that people don't normally see.

Samantha-Jo Carter - Dragonflies

Chalk and Charcoal.

For my Research Methodology Project, i chose to research into Dragonflies because of the many miscommunicated ideas about them. Through my research i found that depending on where in the world you are, and what culture you lean towards, Dragonflies can be seen as either an evil creature or on the other hand a creature of peace and tranquility.

Wire Sculpture.

For the first half of this project i experimented into different ways in which i can portray the dragonfly with numerous materials. When it came to experimenting with different materials i wanted to keep the out come of the image somewhat relative to the research into culture i was working on at the time. For example the image below was made rather dark, with thick colours to show how in European culture the Dragonfly was considered to be the Devils insect, and as a rather evil creature.

Acrylic paints.

This image is of my final image, a piece of wallpaper sample that i decided to create after researching about Japanese cultures and their relations with the tranquility of Dragonflies. After researching into how the Dragonfly is often used within him Decor, i thought i would try and incorporate both decor and Japanese culture into one image in order to create my final piece.

My final piece was created with a mixture of drawing inks, charcoal and chalks.