See Like an Artist article 3
Observing Hands
An artist sees differently than the rest of the world.
Observation- the action or process of observing something or someone carefully or in order to gain information.
You probably don’t remember but when you were about three months old you realized that you had hands. After a while you found out that those hands could do things. The Introduction to Art class is now in our fourth month of school. Many of the students have never thought about the use of their hands for drawing. They knew about writing and scribbling but most of them have never concentrated on using the pencil as an applicator for art. The Observing Hands Project forces the student to examine a part of their being that they may not have taken the time to look at before. The majority of people write with their right hand so they looked sternly at their left hand for this exercise. We did have a few that looked at their right hand as a model. The students then tried to take a three dimensional object (their hand) and recreate it on a two dimensional surface (the paper) using only a pencil, their eyes and their skills.
You will notice that some of the pieces are very cartoonish while others look realistic. Which way do you like better? How would you draw your hand? Go ahead and try.
That’s all for now. Next time we will be looking at complimentary colors, negative space, positive space, monochromatic color, and texture. The project is called “Going Fishing”.
