Hand paintings: Moving away from human portraits as hands lack in identity in comparison.

Hands are the epitome of human control. Sign of intelligence: manipulation of materials, strength, communication.

Hands – based off another image of my mother with her hands on her face.

Photograph taken with the flash which distorts the colouring. Overly yellow and brown tones.

4 hours 6 hours

Hands: my own

Photograph taken with a front facing camera which distorted the skin tone to a pink tint.

Comparison to first hand painting: Pink tone is brighter suggesting that the model is more youthful. In the first painting, the colours are more subdued/ dull. [Possible identity being discovered? Mother’s hands vs my hands.]

Chinchilla face: personal connection – one of my childhood pets.

(Story – born in our house with conjunctivitis. Mother prised eyes open with warm water and cotton wool meaning my mother was the first person he saw and was the only kit not to bite)

Human Power: Feeds and cares for animal.

Animal Power: Love for the animal, company.

In this painting, the hands are hidden by the animal, whilst the animal does not exist on the page without the hands.

In order to merge the two images, I continued the

fur/hair/feathers… In skin tone colours before moving to smooth skin to ease the

transition between the two.

Next:

Possibly use real hands as a surface, focusing on the animal face themselves. Choose animals with relevance Triptych? Use photography as a form of art to play with the control levels. (Temporary painting vs long lasting image – theme of

time. Does the animal or human element dominate the picture, or work in balance?)

To improve:

Work on the realism of the hands as I struggled with this due to the tinted colour scheme.

Try and blend the face into the hands more and do so in a subtler way rather than having such a direct cut in the face.

To improve:

The Primary colours of the duck make it a focal point. I intentionally did not blend the beak into the hand as it is a solid form, however the merging of the duck head to the skin could be more gradual. The sudden colour change disjoints the image slightly.

Duck: Based off my photographs and sketches of the ducks around campus.

(Story- I miss my pet dog and the ducks make me feel less homesick.

Human power: Feeds animal

Animal power: comfort and familiarity for the human.

I tried to make the hands seem more realistic in this painting by not having such strong outlines and shadows.

The rounding of the arm, without the beginnings of clothes, makes the hands look mannequin-esque (unreal and less human.)

I positioned the hands knowing which duck image I was going to use meaning the image fits better on top of the hands unlike in the first painting where the chinchilla image was cropped to meet the hands and looks more severely cut.

Wire hand sculpture covered by fur.

Life size hollow wire sculpture using 16m of wire:

Self standing – strength in human race Wire – lacking in identity See through – fragile/ flawed

Fur made out of black yarn:

Cut into 8cm pieces of yarn approx. Wrapped around the piece of wire and tied by a thin piece of yarn that had been separated into 4 strands. Held the knot securely and then brushed out the yarn so that it separated into individual fibres (fur effect) Trim

26 hours to complete

Is the fur overtaking the hand? Or is it that underneath fur is a manmade creature? (domestication, caged..)

Piece is a bridge between the 2D paintings of animals on hands and the paintings of animals on real hands.

Comments:

Adding fur on top of the wire structure did hide a lot of the detail of the wire model but I do not know how I could have done this any different with yarn, in order to keep this detail. However, animals themselves use fur for insulation therefore it needs to be thick and it encases and protects the skeleton, the detail here is also hidden, therefore the model is actually rather realistic.