Cats & Dogs

This weeks task was to capture the essence of cats and dogs through three dimensional practice, using found material. We looked at a few different three dimensional artists, but the artist I was most inspired by was Alan Fletcher, who is primarily known for his graphic design work. However, "These creatures were conceived one holiday to amuse my three year old grandson. We constructed them from wine corks, flip-top cigarette packs, toilet roll cores, bottle caps, ice cream paddles, drawing pins, film cassettes, plastic spoons, local newspapers, flour and water, watercolours, varnish, and lots of patience". This is a direct quote from Alan fletcher, which I have taken from his archives. 

In the Images below I have documented my own creations which have been inspired by Alan Fletcher. The materials I have used mostly came from routing through my recycling bin, stealing the tops from bottles and spending hours papier- mâché -ing. I added colour by painting layers of acrylic on top of the papier-mâché and the finer details were drawn on with posca pens. I tried to use different shaped objects so each character would look a little different from its counter part. I feel that I have captured the essence of cats and dogs in making my little friends a little abstract and unique as Alan Fletcher would have done, but keeping them with their recognisable features such as pointy ears and whiskers for a cat and droopy tongues and flapping ears for a dog.  Overall, I had a lot of fun making this little unusual family of cats and dogs and it made me realise that good illustration doesn't always have to be serious - it can be fun too!