sandexperiment

I found some storyboards I totally forgot about. Looks like I was brainstorming a Christmas event a couple of years ago, and this picture was a part of it. What a masterpiece! :D

This month I learned a new art technique called botanical bas-relief. It was so nice and relaxing to do, so I thought I would share it here, even though it's not sand related.

Here are the steps we went through: First, we got a piece of clay. We had to knead it to the approximate shape we wanted our artwork to be. It can be any shape; it doesn't really matter. My friend wanted an irregular shape, reminding her of the shapes of the Dali liquid clock from that famous painting "The Persistence of Memory." I wanted to make just a circle.

It's been a month since the start of the experiment. I don't see much progress, but I rather FEEL IT. My muscles are less shaky, moves are more steady and I can feel the sand in my left hand much better than before. I am not sure if you can see the difference. But here are my numbres written by two hands at once at the beginning of February: 

I asked Bing to generate me a picture of an artist drawing with sand on a light box. It looked pretty well, but all four generations had mandala as an art sample. 

 As I started drawing with sand with no prior experience in art, I found myself intimidated by drawing hands pretty quickly. The question from the title I addressed to my sandy Boss (the head of sand art and art therapy studio). She was not an artists by degree too, she was a brilliant phycologist. Her answer I remember to this day. She said: "Maybe it's because you see your hands every single day, they are right here, in front of your eyes, all the time. So you know for sure how they SHOULD look, therefore when the hands are not pictured right, you see it right away, even if you are not an artist".

 Our hands have so many little joints and muscles, so many moving parts and surfaces. Great job, nature, what a wonderful piece of engineering! It's not enough to draw what I see, when I am drawing hands, I also need to remember how they move and function, if I want to draw them somewhat close to reality.

 Here is the graphite drawing I did in the art studio while studying the anatomy of hands. I am happy to admit that it's my second attempt. When my teacher game me the task to draw the hand, my sketch was not even close, and I was nearly crying from desperation. I got back to the task a few months later and - nailed it!

 I am also happy to inform you that at some point I was so distracted on the stream while drawing hands, that I drew 6 fingers on one palm.