Hands do a lot of the talking for us. AJ Power reminded me of this when I dropped in on a recent Comics class. He was inviting students to illustrate the moods and interactions between characters by drawing their hands in gestures. That hit me as one of those obvious yet totally overlooked aspects of figurative work, and expressive portraiture. Where are the hands?!? All of the narratives, emotions, and expressions people can express with their hands! Why haven’t we been drawing them in my portraits and figurative classes?
I was so excited about the idea that I made a class to study expressive hands and heads. I started thinking about what works in a drawing and what doesn’t, and I started collecting examples. Some I collected because I appreciated the rendering. Some I collected because the artist surpassed drawing and the art reads as pure expression.
I’ve collected so many I’ll be sending these in installments, starting with my favorite: Käthe Kollwitz. Her drawings and prints surpass rendering and elevate to pure expression. Look how she combines hands and head together, with the hands oversized, acting as the primary voice or expression, quite often speaking more for the person than the face. The body, if it is included, is simplified to support the expression of the hands. Other narrative elements are edited out. She’s powerfully direct, and in that directness, she gives us deeply relatable emotions and primal narrative, all through physical gesture.
…The keenest among you might have noticed that a few drawings are kind of similar to a study, only reversed. Remember prints make reverse images, so while flipped imagery isn’t common for drawings and paintings, it is a natural part of the printmaking process.
Lendy is on a little trip in Maine, so I asked her to send me art. She sent me some text messages from the museum: Ashley Bryan. He is heroic. (…) It’s not just the wretched tale of slavery. It is his curiosity and headlong approach to art. He made books, puppets, prints, paintings, collages. …
One year ago in March, to protect our students and teachers from a new coronavirus, the Seattle Artist League moved our classes online. The virus was declared a national emergency, and we went into quarantine. We have now been in quarantine for thirteen months. Through this year, we have met each other online to draw, …
[image_with_animation image_url=”11306″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]” img_link=”https://drawinglics.com/photos/8771703/mille-fiori-favoriti-an-autumn-drive-over-kenosha-pass-to-buy-a-bear-an-autumn-drive-over-kenosha-pass-to-buy-a-bear.py Most of the information in this post is straight out of a podcast called Lexicon Valley, with John H. McWhorter. McWhorter is a linguistics professor at Columbia University, and Lexicon Valley is one of my favorite podcasts. I was listening to a recent post about color, in particular the …
Exercise your creativity This SAL Challenge is a vocabulary based creative challenge every day for January. Materials are artist’s choice. You can draw, paint, sew, collage, sculpt your food, anything you want. See below for today’s creative challenge. Set the timer for 20 minutes and see what happens. PUERILE childishly silly and trivial. #salchallenge @seattleartistleague …
Drawing Hands: Käthe Kollwitz
Hands do a lot of the talking for us. AJ Power reminded me of this when I dropped in on a recent Comics class. He was inviting students to illustrate the moods and interactions between characters by drawing their hands in gestures. That hit me as one of those obvious yet totally overlooked aspects of figurative work, and expressive portraiture. Where are the hands?!? All of the narratives, emotions, and expressions people can express with their hands! Why haven’t we been drawing them in my portraits and figurative classes?
I was so excited about the idea that I made a class to study expressive hands and heads. I started thinking about what works in a drawing and what doesn’t, and I started collecting examples. Some I collected because I appreciated the rendering. Some I collected because the artist surpassed drawing and the art reads as pure expression.
I’ve collected so many I’ll be sending these in installments, starting with my favorite: Käthe Kollwitz. Her drawings and prints surpass rendering and elevate to pure expression. Look how she combines hands and head together, with the hands oversized, acting as the primary voice or expression, quite often speaking more for the person than the face. The body, if it is included, is simplified to support the expression of the hands. Other narrative elements are edited out. She’s powerfully direct, and in that directness, she gives us deeply relatable emotions and primal narrative, all through physical gesture.
…The keenest among you might have noticed that a few drawings are kind of similar to a study, only reversed. Remember prints make reverse images, so while flipped imagery isn’t common for drawings and paintings, it is a natural part of the printmaking process.
Related Classes
Expressive Portraits starts 9/18
Head & Hands starts 9/25
Comics starts 10/7
Woodblock Portraits starts 10/19
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Ashley Bryan
Lendy is on a little trip in Maine, so I asked her to send me art. She sent me some text messages from the museum: Ashley Bryan. He is heroic. (…) It’s not just the wretched tale of slavery. It is his curiosity and headlong approach to art. He made books, puppets, prints, paintings, collages. …
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One year ago in March, to protect our students and teachers from a new coronavirus, the Seattle Artist League moved our classes online. The virus was declared a national emergency, and we went into quarantine. We have now been in quarantine for thirteen months. Through this year, we have met each other online to draw, …
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[image_with_animation image_url=”11306″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”]” img_link=”https://drawinglics.com/photos/8771703/mille-fiori-favoriti-an-autumn-drive-over-kenosha-pass-to-buy-a-bear-an-autumn-drive-over-kenosha-pass-to-buy-a-bear.py Most of the information in this post is straight out of a podcast called Lexicon Valley, with John H. McWhorter. McWhorter is a linguistics professor at Columbia University, and Lexicon Valley is one of my favorite podcasts. I was listening to a recent post about color, in particular the …
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Exercise your creativity This SAL Challenge is a vocabulary based creative challenge every day for January. Materials are artist’s choice. You can draw, paint, sew, collage, sculpt your food, anything you want. See below for today’s creative challenge. Set the timer for 20 minutes and see what happens. PUERILE childishly silly and trivial. #salchallenge @seattleartistleague …