Page #3 (Fallow Deer)

For page #3 of my zine, I wanted to base the page around the theme of the Fallow Deer.
The Fallow Deer is a beautiful animal, and is a species that is almost a symbol of the country, with its association with wealth and ownership tied into our culture.

Raby Castle's parkland features a large Deer herd, and the Deer found currently at the park are decedents of the original Deer purchased by a past member of the family.
The Deer are used for food, and as biological lawnmowers, keeping the grass to a short length.

http://archies.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Fallow-Deer-3.jpg < image reference at this link.

I created a few illustrations of the animal (below), however I had some trouble deciding which images to use.

Like with the construction of pages 1 and 2, I will be using Adobe Photoshop to assemble the page, and I will be creating each page separately, in order to rearrange pages if needed, and to allow me to focus on one page at a time.
All my pages are in an a5 size, however I will be printing onto sheets of A4, which will allow up to 4 pages to be displayed on one double sided sheet.
This method allows for the production of my zine to be very cost effective.

I began the construction of the third page, by scanning my illustrations into photoshop.
Once these were scanned in, I enhanced the colour as the high quality scanner tends to wash out some level of colour and tone in the images that it takes in. I accidentally made the file appear grayscale, and as I went to change it back, I hesitated, as I actually looked at it and paused while I thought about which colour scheme complimented it most.
After a little while of thinking, I decided to keep it greyscale.

I then moved the two images around on the canvas, and made them fit alongside each other, and work together.
Since the Deer will only have 1 page featured, I had to make the careful decision of which illustrations I would use, as I didn't want the page to be too cramped, especially as text was another thing that would need to be taken into consideration.

Once I was happy with the placement of the illustrations, I started to think about the folklore of the Deer, and came across quite a bit of information.

http://www.druidry.org/library/animals/stags-and-deer < image reference at this link.

image reference at this link > google.com

The Deer is one particular animal that has a lot of mythology, and folklore surrounding it, however Deer are split into different types, with red, roe, and fallow being just a few.

A lot of Deer folklore is spread between these variations, most notably the red deer, as I came across a lot of folklore revolving around this particular type of deer.

http://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/deer/ < image reference at this link.

Also, a lot of the folklore that I came across was Native American, or from a county other than the UK, and so it was very very hard to come across any British Fallow Deer folklore.
It was for this reason, that I decided to pursue basing text off the animal's traits and characteristics, like I have done for a few of my other featured animals in my zine.

I assembled a small brainstorm, and thought abut what traits sum up this particular species of Deer. This brainstorm can be seen below.

All types of Deer are shy creatures, and they will regularly run away on approach. They are quite secretive animals, and they have been used as a source of food, and material for 1000's of years.

I feel that the Deer has a strong connection to strength, power, royalty and wealth, and I feel this way primarily due to the fact that this is the type of animal usually found on country land, and estates.
Fallow Deer can be found in a large herd in Raby Castle for example, and perhaps this would be a great base to come up with a worded summery of the species, reflecting on their grouping, and strength because of it.

http://www.completelygonenomad.com/wp-content/uploads/DSC_3603o.jpg < image reference at this link.

In the end, I decided to come up with the term, "Strength in numbers", and I thought that this message best represented the animal in a short, rememberable summary.

In the end I was very happy with the outcome of the developed page, and I was excited to see the final page to be featured alongside my other pages.











Thomas.