Module 2 - Animal Magic

Module 2 is all about animal patterns and I was excited to find a sketchbook which was appropriate for the topic!

Fig. 1: Sketchbook cover

The first task was to find visual information - an overwhelming choice of material is available on the internet and I also had pages from an old part-work that my children had when they were young, from which images were cut out.

 Fig. 2

 Fig. 3

Fig. 4

I selected images from all branches of the animal kingdom - mammals, reptiles, amphibians, insects, birds, butterflies...

Fig. 5

and  brainstormed my thoughts for just three of them:
1. Tiger - strong; powerful; fierce; brave; deadly; claws; scratch; cat; prowling; stealthy; pounces; concealed; hidden; camouflage; golden; stripes; sleek
2. Snake - sinuous; writhe; flexible; twist; twine; coil; glide; slither; scaley; stripes; diamonds; forked tongue; fangs; venomous; squeeze; crush; cylindrical; long; narrow; slender
3. Butterfly - fluttering; fly; gentle; fragile; multicoloured; spots; stripes; patches; caterpillar; transform; mutate; slender; delicate; ethereal; short-lived

I realise I could have gone on and on with this exercise but felt I'd probably got enough initial ideas.

THE STUDY OF TONE
I made a series of tonal columns using different media:

 Fig. 6

The left hand column in Fig. 6 is made using ink. The first bottle I opened was actually grey rather than black but I left it in place as it helps the tonal quality of the column, then went over the upper half with black ink.

The right hand column is charcoal.

 Fig. 7

The left hand column in Fig. 7 is made using a Sharpie pen and the right hand column is a collage of newsprint. The collage works very well as I managed to find sections of adverts with different tones of grey in the image.

Fig. 8

The left hand column in Fig. 8 is made with sequins and the lower section is made up of silver and white sequins. Unfortunately the silver is appearing much darker in the image than it is in reality. It actually works rather well in real life. The right hand column is white chalk on black paper.

Fig. 9

This last column is mixed media - including acrylic paint, torn papers, watercolour, black pastel and white chalk and again I'm happy with this one, especially the collage part at the top.