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.
[image_with_animation image_url=”8922″ alignment=”” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] ARTWORK PICKUP AT GALVANIZE Saturday April 7 10:00am – 12:00pm <– If you can do this it would make less work for us! ARTWORK PICKUP AT THE LEAGUE Thursday April 12 9:30-2:00, 5:30-10:00 Sunday April 15 6:00-6:25 Monday April 16 9:30-2:00, 5:30-10:00 Tuesday April 17 9:30-2:00 Any …
[image_with_animation image_url=”8367″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] I asked Claire Putney to name some of the inspirational watercolor painters for her upcoming workshop Watercolor Landscapes. She listed: Sunga Park Maria Ginzburg Walton Ford Z L Feng In the next week I’ll share artwork by each of these painters. Today I have work by Z L Feng. …
I took a little pause from posting 30SAL Challenge favorite entries so we could get the new class listings online. Voila! All of our spring classes and workshops are now ready for registration. Find your class. They’re already selling! 30SAL Challenge favorites coming soon! There will be many adorations, and prizes. But first, I sleep. …
In Friday’s post I bragged about the drawings created in my recent Painterly Figures with Tone class. The earlier post shared how beautiful a drawing can be when the figure is sketched with no more or less attention than the wall behind it, with no outlines or delineations of form, only scribbles of tone. Today’s …
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
Related Posts
Artwork Pickup & Spring Break
[image_with_animation image_url=”8922″ alignment=”” animation=”Fade In” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] ARTWORK PICKUP AT GALVANIZE Saturday April 7 10:00am – 12:00pm <– If you can do this it would make less work for us! ARTWORK PICKUP AT THE LEAGUE Thursday April 12 9:30-2:00, 5:30-10:00 Sunday April 15 6:00-6:25 Monday April 16 9:30-2:00, 5:30-10:00 Tuesday April 17 9:30-2:00 Any …
Z L Feng
[image_with_animation image_url=”8367″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] I asked Claire Putney to name some of the inspirational watercolor painters for her upcoming workshop Watercolor Landscapes. She listed: Sunga Park Maria Ginzburg Walton Ford Z L Feng In the next week I’ll share artwork by each of these painters. Today I have work by Z L Feng. …
ZZZZZZZZZ….
I took a little pause from posting 30SAL Challenge favorite entries so we could get the new class listings online. Voila! All of our spring classes and workshops are now ready for registration. Find your class. They’re already selling! 30SAL Challenge favorites coming soon! There will be many adorations, and prizes. But first, I sleep. …
Painterly Figures with Tone: Part 2
In Friday’s post I bragged about the drawings created in my recent Painterly Figures with Tone class. The earlier post shared how beautiful a drawing can be when the figure is sketched with no more or less attention than the wall behind it, with no outlines or delineations of form, only scribbles of tone. Today’s …