Much Ado About Nothing

In honesty, I was struggling to settle on an idea for Olio that fitted the brief. However, when I was looking at back at research, particularly Romeo and Juliet, I remembered another Shakespeare play. My all time favourite Shakespeare is Much Ado About Nothing, and I remembered a small scene towards the end where Beatrice and Benedick have both written sonnets about the other but have kept them hidden. Hero and Claudio however find them and give them to the other. The small insight into what the other really feels contributes to the plays happy ending and with the little push from Claudio and Hero, the pair are finally together. Here is that particular scene, from the film version with Kenneth Branagh ...





From this, I drew up an Olio design based on this scene. I didn't directly use any of the actors here as reference but used my own characters for it.

This is the rough mock up for the much ado about nothing inspired idea. I didn't want to clutter the design with too much of a background, plus my speciality has always been to focus on the characters, so they were the ones I wanted to emphasise in this work. What started out as a rough colour backdrop turned out to look sort of like half of a heart, so I decided to mimic it behind the other character to try and make a subtle heart shape to link the two characters together as being partnering pieces of art work.

I really like this idea. It fits the brief, it's based on something that means a lot to me and it focuses on characters, the thing I feel I'm best at.