Image by Jameswy.Wang via Flickr
Many artists struggle to reproduce certain body parts correctly – the proportions, shapes and shading can all be difficult, particularly on noses, feet and hands. If your art history class needs a little hands-on experience to make the history come to life, consider centering an art history lesson around the practical need for artists to learn proper methods for drawing hands in their work.
One thing your students may find comforting is that even Leonardo da Vinci and other artists during the Renaissance expressed uncertainty with drawing hands. Entire sketchbooks during this time period could be filled with drawings of nothing but the human hand.
M.C. Escher focused on visual illusions but two of his pieces – specifically, “Drawing Hands” and “Hands with Reflecting Sphere” – give two common angles for drawing hands that can be excellent tools in teaching students how to draw. “Drawing Hands” shows two hands, palms down, holding a pencil. “Hands with Reflecting Sphere” exposes the palm to the viewer with a spherical object in it. Students will enjoy Escher’s fine, detailed work in conjunction with his whimsical logic.
For a look at abstractly drawn hands, see Pablo Picasso’s take in his portrait, “Igor Stravinsky.” Although the hands are drawn in a very simple manner with no shading and with exaggerated proportions, it might be useful to your students to see how simply the idea of human hands can be conveyed.
Contemporary artist Carol Gray has made an entire career out of her attention to how the hands of various people tell their stories. Her drawings and watercolors show a wide breadth of hands and will disply to your students how even the smallest details (like veins on the back of a hand or dirt caught in fingernails) can tell your viewer an awful lot about the people in your art. Note the differences in the hands found in “Fingers in the Key of G” (a musician) as opposed to “A Golden Gathering (a woman gathering wheat). Her art also shows that color and light play a significant role in how hands are viewed and percieved.
