Page #16-17 (Common Shrew)

For page #16 and #17 I wanted to feature the common British shrew, and since I have an admiration toward rodents, I wanted to give this animal a double page spread.
For the first step in developing these two pages, I took a look at all of the Shrew illustrations that I worked on, and from this, I decided upon which of the drawings I could perhaps use on the pages.

I decided to only pick illustrations that I would be happy with featuring as part of the design, and so I decided to choose the following two images.

I really like how I produced the line-work on these two images, and so from this step, I made a new canvas on Photoshop, and went about starting with the development and production of page 16.

I found that arranging the illustration to fill the centre of the image, it would direct the eyes easily to the illustration, and with the above and below portions of the page unfilled, any potential wording could be featured easily there.
Like all of my images, I tweaked the CYMK  of the image, to compensate for the scanners laser, which is known for often washing tone out of anything it scans in.

Now that I was happy with the arrangement of the image on page 16, I turned my focus toward the development of page 17, and made an identical blank canvas as a starting point.



Using the other illustration of a Shrew that I was pleased with, I placed the image onto the canvas, and enhanced the black point of the image once more.

I decided soon after, that I wasn't fond of the tail being cut off, and I felt that it looked quite odd.
I tried getting past this by shrinking the image, however this just didn't work with the size of the canvas, as it would have made the image hard to see, something which I did not favour.

I removed the tail using the digital eraser tool, and I was happy with this manipulation.

Now that both pages were roughly assembled, I looked toward the wording portion of the assembly, and since I wanted to focus on the folklore side of the animal, I did some research online.
After browsing for a while, I came across a lot of websites pointing to one of William Shakespeare's plays, entitled "The Taming of the Shrew".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Taming_of_the_Shrew.jpg < image reference at this link.

I thought that this play would be a good topic to base my wording on, especially since Shakespeare is one of those historical figures that are entwined with english culture.

I thought about how I could possibly tie the two together, and whilst I was sat thinking of ways to do this, I thought about using a 'play on words' based on the tile of the play, so that the reference to the play would be clear, and also provide a personal touch.

I came to the conclusion of using the term, "The Shrew cannot be tamed", as a way to convey the cultural tie in with the play, and the zine's page, and I was very happy with this choice of words.
I wanted to spread this text across the two pages, and so I came up with the following designs.

I really felt as if these two designs were bold, and so I was very happy with the prospect of adding these two pages to the zine, once all of the other outstanding designs had been completed.

















Thomas.