Hands and eyes (Module 5 Chpt2)

So in at the deep end sketching hands and eyes in this chapter. Alas non of my drawings even vaguely bore any resemblance, in terms of quality, to the 'praying hands' depicted on the first page of the notes. Having said that I did enjoy doing these sketches a great deal finding the best approach was to take a deep breath and jump in.


Activities 1 and 2
Sketching my hand.
It will be fairly obvious from my sketches that I'm left handed. I wear no jewellery on this hand and have some topical eczema on my palm that has created some fairly deep wrinkles on that palm. I sketched my hand using pencil and additionally used brown paper and blue colouring pencil for the second sketch of my hand. I aimed to complete each sketch within 5 minutes. Concentrating on proportion and form rather than detail.

Playing with hand designs.
A little light relief and a chance to revisit some themes from previous chapters:

OpArt

Zentangles (Module 2)

Sgraffito (Module 4)

Eyes
Rather than look at paintings / portraits. I looked at artists drawings and then at linocuts. Lino because the face is reduced to the necessary minimum to convey light, movement, wrinkles etc. Drawings rather than paintings as you can see the artists mark making skills:

Drawings - some superb stuff online. I don't know if any of these really need an introduction, but in order: Durer, Holbein, Hockney, Grayson Perry, Kathe Kollvitz, Lucien Freud, Modigliani and Picasso

Linocuts: I'm not sure who has done these cuts but I thought they represented a range of styles:

My drawings of eyes
In particular my eyes. I started out looking at a photograph or two I had taken with my phone camera. This was by way of loosening up. After that I put my glasses on and sat in front of a mirror. I was surprised at how long I was working from life. Time flies when you are really concentrating:

Drawing from photograph using various drawing tools:

Using a Derwent Graphitone 4b pencil

Using a square lead stick and graphitone pencil.

Drawing in front of the mirror

purple and white colouring pencil on brown paper.

I'm glad I persevered with the purple and white pencil, it really allowed me to get in the light in a truly simple way