Owl and mouse

Today I have painted an owl about to strike on a mouse on top of a traffic light. I think incorporating the owl doing its natural instinct of hunting, with the man made traffic  light, represents how animals are having to hunt in the city. Just like how animals would in the wild, once migrated into the city use man made objects to help hunt.

Idea development

I quite like the idea of placing the animals within the city in subtly hinted city scenes, making them part of the city. Bringing or forcing man made objects into their lives. I have had the continuous idea throughout this project of making my works humorous but with a serious message to them, I would quite like this in my works building up to my final piece, even in the final piece itself!

Final piece based on the workshop

Here is my first final piece of my project. One of our final pieces has to be based on our workshop, my workshop was painting, we looked into layering colours. I thought I could incorporate what I learnt into my final piece by painting buildings and layers colours on top to create the look of a packed, cramped city. This final piece is similar to all my development pieces I have with the animal stood in front of the buildings. I think that this was successful because in this case less is more, the simplicity works, and you feel sorry for the little deer at the bottom of the painting.

Slinkachu

Slinkachu is a 33 year old street artist living in the UK

The ‘Little People Project’ started in 2006. It involves the remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which he then places, photographs and leaves on the street.

It is both a street art installation project and a photography project. The street-based side of his work plays with the notion of surprise and he aims to encourage city-dwellers to be more aware of their surroundings.

This piece in particular I think relates to my project. Here he is showing how our cities are damaging wildlife; the deer here are nibbling on a cigarette butt. It shows how our waste effects wildlife and how animals are having to adapt to being in the city. This photo represented how the urban city is the deer’s environment.

Raccoon and buildings blended

I decided to take my pencil drawings and make a painting, I chose to use a raccoon as they are quite a popular animal to find in cities, pretty much completely urbanized and surviving on cities.

I used the same colours of the raccoon’s fur to make it look like it blends into the buildings.

Sketchbook drawings based on Wittfooth’s paintings

I have been really inspired by Martin Wittfooth’s paintings so I have done some sketchbook pencil drawings of some animals combined with man made objects.

Martin Wittfotth’s painting with the elephant with the pollution coming out of its head inspired me to draw this picture above. The rat has pollution chimneys coming out of its back.

Martin Wittfooth

Martin Wittfooth is a contemporary painter who lives and works in Brooklyn NY, he was born in 1981.

Martin Wittfooth’s work stems from a personal desire to process and reflect on the modern-day industrialized world and its effect with its surrounding environment, and the forced and uneasy assimilation that take place when the two inevitably meet. By removing the human figure from the works and instead portraying nature in man-made or manufactured settings, Wittfooth’s work forces us to be impartial observers to these scenes and to process the tension within them as mere witnesses rather than active participants. Much of this work deals with violence, disquiet, chaos and collapse, but not entirely absent in these works is also the suggestion of hope and the presence of beauty with the naturalness and life of the animals.

I really like this painting above as it actually combines the animal with the pollution, enhancing the effect pollution has directly to the animal, and how we as humans are having an effect on the animals.

I like this image above because it reminds me of my group city project work, showing all our daily human waste and how it builds up.

Research into the migration of animals into cities

I have decided to do some research into animals migrating into cities, in the UK and abroad.

On the Cape Peninsula near Cape town  in South Africa, human development have been encroaching on baboon habitat for years and the baboons have adapted remarkably well in raiding homes for food. Elsewhere in Africa, vervet monkeys as well as baboons adapt to urbanisation, and similarly enter houses and gardens for food. African penguins are also known to invade urban areas, searching for food and a safe place to breed.

Peregrine falcons have also been known to nest in urban areas, nesting on tall buildings and predating pigeons. The peregrine falcon is becoming more nocturnal in urban environments, using urban lighting to spot its prey. This has provided them with new opportunities to hunt night-flying birds and bats. Foxes are also in many urban and suburban areas in the UK as scavengers.

There are estimates that more than 2,000 coyotes make a comfortable living in the Chicago metropolitan area today. This spring, biologists in Los Angeles radio-collared the first mountain lion ever found in Griffith Park, the home of the Hollywood sign. Complaints about bears in Nevada around Lake Tahoe increased dramatically between 1997 and 2007. 

These are just a few facts about what animals are migrating into the city. Human activity is causing changes in the environment, we are taking up more and more space on our planet for our homes and expanding cities; polluting and destroying animals habitats. This all forces animals to have to migrate into cities. The human population is growing fast, human activity changes and destroys the environment that animals live in.