Week 4 artist: Kay Nielsen.

    

Kay Nielsen was a popular illustrator during the early 20th century. Nilesen benefited the new advancements in printing technology that allowed painting and drawing to be reproduced to a high quality.
In his artistic career; Kay Nielsen has provided illustrations for the story books 'East of the sun and west of the moon', 'Fairy Tales by Hans Andersen', 'Hansel and Gretel, and Other Stories by the Brothers Grimm',  'Red Magic' and 'Arabian nights' (although unpublished until years after his death). In addition to these illustration sets, he painted scenery for the royal Danish Theater and spend 4 years working for the Walt disney company. His work was used in fantasia sequences as well as providing concept work for the proposed adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's 'Little Mermaid'.
His watercolour illustrations are lavished yet delicate, his paintings are flat like the Japanese prints he took inspiration from. He used colour and pattern to give his artwork depth.
The figures in his paintings are highly stylised - they are elongated, pale and feminine creatures graced in layers upon layers of intensely detailed finery.
He was fond of juxtaposing vertical lines with gentle arches (further influences from Japanese prints, in particular the 'Hiroshige wave') as well as warm colours in otherwise cool palettes to draw attention to important areas of the composition.

Week 3 (watercolours)

I used the wet-on-wet technique entirely for painting the bird, in layers, so that while it is very fluid it does not loose any intensity of colour from the pigment being spread out so much. I then worked into the painting only very slightly with a fineliner to pick out a few details; such as the texture of the feathers on the birds chest and details around the eye. I kept the background very linear and simple, just enough to fill the composition not not so much as to full the focus away from the painting of the bird.

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I then completed 3 more watercolour studies of animals. I used gum arabic to create interesting textures and mark making. I built each painting up using many layers, exaggerating the purple, blue and red tones slightly so all three paintings had a harmony. I added the gum arabic in at various stages so it not only reveals patches of unpainted white paper but also at various stages of building up the layers. When rubbed away they reveal areas of paler swirled greys and browns that I painted over at some stage.
With a black fineliner and white gel pen; I enhanced areas of shade and light by dappling the pens repeatedly in the appropriate dark or pale areas of colour. The specked marks from the pen along with the pale dashes created by the gum arabic and the layers of slightly exaggerated colour make the paintings very textural, engaging and slightly stylized. I enjoy working in this style and look forward to further experimenting and pushing what I can achive with watercolour painting and mixed media.

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Week 2 artists: Ulisse Aldrovandi.

Ulisse Aldrovandi

From 'Monstrorum Historia'

Ulisse Aldrovandi lived between the years  1522-1605 an Itallian naturalist  is considered the founder of modern Natural History. his cabinet of curiosities was one of the most spectacular of his time.
his most famous book 'Monstrorum Historia' was a treasury of fantastical and grotesque beasts both entirely imagined and true through birth deformities. Aldrovandi was able to put these two forms under the same title as there was not yet a distinction between the literary and the scientific.
The illustrations are completed with the textbook detail of a true scientific publication, but feature beast more often found in children's story books. This combination gives the illustrations an bizarre, alchemic feel.

Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick with medieval written attributes.

Text credited to 'The Medieval Bestiary animals in the middle ages'

The antelope is so wild that hunters cannot catch it, except in one instance: When the antelope is thirsty it goes to the Euphrates River to drink, but as it plays in the thickets of herecine trees there, its horns get caught in the branches and it cannot free itself. The hunter, hearing its cries, comes and kills it.

Its horns are like saws, and with them it can cut down trees.

Badgers work together to dig their holes in the mountains. One will lie down at the entrance to the hole, holding a stick in its mouth, while the others pile earth on its belly. Two badgers take hold of the stick with their mouths and drag the loaded badger away.

The Indian bull has horns that are movable, and a hide so hard it rejects spears. Its tawny colored hair turns contrariwise, and it is swift as a bird. If captured it breathes fiercely to avoid being tamed. Gentiles sacrifice the young bull (bullock) rather than the old bull.

The fox is a crafty and deceitful animal that never runs in a straight line, but only in circles. When it wants to catch birds to eat, the fox rolls in red mud so that it appears to be covered in blood. It then lies apparently lifeless; birds, deceived by the appearance of blood and thinking the fox to be dead, land on it and are immediately devoured.

If a wolf sees a man before the man sees the wolf, the man will lose his voice. If the man sees the wolf first, the wolf can no longer be fierce. If a man loses his voice because the wolf saw him first, he should take off all his clothes and bang two rocks together, which will keep the wolf from attacking.

The wolf lives from prey, from the earth, and sometimes from the wind. When the wolf sneaks into a sheep fold, it approaches like a tame dog and is careful to approach from upwind so that the farm dogs do not smell its evil breath. If it steps on a branch and makes a noise, the wolf punishes itself by biting the offending foot.The wolf is cunning: it does not hunt for food for its cubs near its lair, but goes far away to find prey. If a wolf is caught in a trap, it will mutilate itself to escape rather than allow itself to be captured.

week 2 (monoprinting)

I completed drawings of the same dove using two juxtaposing media. Both images have a hazy quality of line; the monoprint dove has very grainy, dark mark making where areas of the fibrous old paper has made contact with the ink whereas the silk drawn dove has a more blurred, pale line where the ink from the fineliner has spread across the permeable silk. The monoprint dove has an allover more solid and tangible effect because of the intensity of the black ink on the off-white paper. The Silk drawing on the other hand appears a lot more flimsy due to the translucent quality of the fabric and indistinct line.
I think the detail I can achieve with monoprinting goes beyond what I can with the silk drawing in this instance.

Week 1 artist: Casper Henderson.

Casper Henderson

From 'The Book of Barely Imagined Beings'

In 1957, Jorge Luis Borges published 'The Book of Imaginary Beings', “a handbook of the strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination". In response to this, Casper Henderson wrote and illustrated 'The Book of Barely Imagined Beings', full of illustrations and descriptions in true Medieval bestiary style, only all the animals Henderson presents in the book are real. I think it is a wonderful idea to present these creatures as being almost mythic; showing that we don't need mythology and legend to be exposed to extraordinary beings. The intricate and fantastical illustrations single out the unusual beasts by colouring them red; identifying them in the busy compositions and giving them prominence like a spotlight being shone onto something we never realized was special before.

Week 1. (pencil colour, fineliner+water, biro)

I completed this study using pencil colours. I tried to delicately, gradually build the layers of colours to create  a dreamy, soft effect. The pencil colors have a grainy texture on the slightly textured paper. I like the subtly of the pencils and also the high level of control you have over them to achieve the finest details but also the ability to hold them loosely and block in or layer up large areas of colour.
I tried to slightly stylized and exaggerated the lilac, pink and blue tones on the fur of the white cat to make it appear a little more fantastical and intriguing, in the same way that medieval artists would often colour the pelts of ordinary animals to all shades of outlandish colours to instill a kind of strange flourish to the plain pelted animals like deers, sparrows, bears and horses.

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This study was completed using water-soluble and water-proof fineliners and water. I loosely drew the form of a rams head using the thick, water-soluble fineliner then went back over the lines I drew with a damp brush; causing the ink to bleed and spread an interesting bluey-purple hue and created tone. Once dry, I worked over the image with a second, much finer water-proof fineliner to add smaller details such as texture to the fur and grooves in the antlers. I then blacked out the background. This focused the attention and brought prominence to the ram's head; while also giving the suspended head a gloomy and sullen atmosphere.

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Medieval Bestiaries.

Medieval bestiaries were treasuries of artworks and text describing various birds, animals and rocks. Each beast in the book would have it's own drawing alongside a characterisation, describing it's general attributes. It was also common for each beast to have a moral story accompanying it. The people of the times were fascinated in the animals that their survival depended on; and were hungry to know what the animals around them could teach them; as the book of Job said "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind." The animals often had links drawn between them and biblical stories, such as the pelican who revives her young after three days with her own blood, in the same way christ was revived after three days to save humanity - or the dove, who is safe from dragons so long as they stay in the peridexion tree in the same way people will be safe from evil so long as they stay with the church. These divine characteristics given to the animals give them a mystical and spiritual quality. 

Project Breif.

In this project I would like to explore the way different animal species have been portrayed in folklore, legends and mythology - comparing and contrasting this to their representation in field guides and science.
I would also like to research the artworks accompanying these different portrayals - from the fantastical child-like egg tempera paintings in medieval bestiaries to the painstaking, anatomically correct woodcuts from later nature books. I would like to find a way at combing the best of these two styles and mindsets to create illustrations which are at the same time feasible and magical.

Client brief.

I would like to create a book of animal illustrations based on fables written in Medieval bestiaries. I would like to combine the magical jewel colours of medieval art and illumination with the detail and practicality of scientific illustrations of animals and plants. I would also like the text to reflect this style; magical stories retold in practical scientific terms.
The book I would like to make would be something independently published or by an organisation such as Incline Press. It could be sold in independent book or gift shops.

Final Minor Evaluation.

For my final major piece I produced a poetry and illustration zine expressing a renegade, sentimental perspective on taxidermy exhibits in museums.  
I began my research by searching out animal and plant decay in nature; things such as carcases, bones, skins, feathers, fur and dying autumn plants. After a visit to Anthony Bennett's Swarfhorse exhibition, I felt that this pathway was already at a stalemate because I felt I could not communicate anything with my animal decay drawings in the same way Bennett flipped our perspective on traditional fairy tales with his snow white in a casket sculpture.
I turned to museums to try and find inspiration in something that offered me more of a backstory to work with. I was particularly affected by the taxidermy animals and mounted insects I saw. I found the moth and butterfly mounts particularly interesting. I wanted to capture their fragile, dusty forms and so experimented with different media to try emulate this. I found monoprint on antique paper was particularly effective in showing their paper-thin, withered forms through the hazy quality of line it can achieve on the thin, fibrous papers. I took inspiration from the natural form photographer Karl Blossfeldt and old scientific illustrations in field guides to show a high level of detail in my illustrations. I was pleased with the technical outcome of my prints but I felt they had no narrative.
I focused on my initial reaction to the taxidermy; the feeling of disquiet. I thought back to my research on the artist Kelly McCallum; who combines jewelry making and victorian taxidermy in her art pieces. I found it strange that all it took was a plaque or a piece of metalsmith to transform the animals from something that was once living into an artefact or a thing; and the process that led to the animal being in the state is never thought about.
With the intention to create more sentimental and communicative, I researched artists such as Marco Mazzoni, Hazel Lee Santino and Socar Myles, looking at the way they use beautiful detail and natural forms to create a narrative in their work. I also studied the work of Joris Hoefnagel; I was inspired by his floating compositions but it was his inclusion of biblical quotes in his work that gave me the idea of presenting my illustrations alongside text.
In my original client brief; I was deciding between displaying the text alongside the image or including it within the artwork somehow. I chose to include only the latin names for the animals and plants on the drawing itself, copying the style of old field guides. I decided the text should appear beside the corresponding image, in a clean typed font framed within a neat border in the same way a plaque would appear beside the animal in a museum.
I combined all I had learnt through my experimentation of different media- watercolour, fineliner, graphite, colour pencil, ink and monoprint, to create my series of small scale monoprint and watercolour illustrations with fineliner text on natural paper to create a time-worn effect. I focused the dark line of the monoprint around the eyes to give them a hollow, haunted look and highlights to give them an extra glassy, almost teary look. The flowers both bring the animal back to the nature it was removed from and has connotations with funerals.
The ideas explored within the piece were very personal and were completed almost with no intention to be seen by many people. It seemed most logical for my pictures and text to be presented in a zine format; something small, handmade and personal that could be distributed museum shop or nearby cafe.
I think the formatting of the zine was successful, consistent and appropriate. I worked closely with the poet, discussing themes and the kind of atmosphere I wanted the images and text to evoke, and I think they have turned out the be very complimentary of one another. If I were to do this piece again, I would try and come to some kind of conclusion at the end of the zine, I think it ends quite abruptly without any kind of closure or resolve. I think it should end on either a short, abrupt statement on the last page, or one final art piece that would leave more of an effect on the reader.