Animalia

So as brief two, we studied animals, movements, structures and characteristics. I was excited for this brief, I love animals and they are my favorite things in the world, they show beauty, grace and aggression all at the same time, and have a much broader range of characteristics.As well as having animals brought into the university, one of these creatures being a super cute Meerkat kitten named Merlin, we visited Flamingo land, with a wider spectrum of animals.
Sketching from life was in some ways easier, than taking from a photograph and later studying it as I could see the ripple in the muscle and how their joints work, giving me a greater understanding of how that particular animals biological motor works.
I also looked at photographs I had taken at Chester Zoo in my personal time and worked from them later on.

Though looking at wild animals was great fun, a major source of inspiration was my own four legged friend; Reethi my Hungarian vizsla. Whilst working on this brief I took my aged and tattered novels out when walking him, working in fine liner on the flip pages, though this proved to be a problem as he didn't slow down for anything, so eventually i gave in and had to work from photographs.

During the brief I experimented in mediums, water colour, acrylic, gouache and fine liner.









As well as completing four sketchbooks, we had to come up with four mythological creatures, from our own imagination.

My first creation was the 'Sea Lion' but instead of being completely fabulous, it's a marine animal that would work, the tusk on its head acting like the mane of the land living Lion, the bigger and more fully developed the tusk or mane, the more dominant is the Lion/Sea Lion, also giving the animal the ability to move quickly in the depths, cutting through the water quickly.