The Knights Round's Rest

My idea for this piece was to create a tomb like area for King Arthur's Knights of the Round, with Excalibur embedded into a stone as the centre piece. The reason I wanted to have Excalibur as part of my project is that it's detailed and a powerful presence to contrast against the tamer looks of the knights own swords, thus serving to tell it's own story that even in death, the sacrifices of the knights were still overshadowed by Arthur's own blade.

A key part of this project was creating realistic stone and brickwork, by getting the discolouration, wear and tear and the different sized stone correct so that the environment looks authentic. To enable me to do this and replicate with authenticity, I visited Lincoln castle and cathedral and took photos of the stonework, as well as surrounding vestiges of old architecture.

When it came to lighting this project, I originally intended to just use braziers, however during development I decided that while I had created realistic stonework, I had lost some of the fantasy associated with the Arthurian legend. To add the fantasy element back, I looked into the many Arthurian legends, and decided that creating a chandelier adorned with light projecting crystals with a dragons eye would help add to the story, and enable me to experiment with lighting the more important aspects of the scene.