Drawing American Sign Language Hands

My private art lessons are very organic-what we study ebbs and flows with what I think the student would be interested in or in an area they may need to develop further. One day, my student and her mom were discussing a piece my student had done (at home) and there was some, ahem, disagreement as to how readable the hand was in the drawing. After a little more discussion, my student admitted that, although she felt she drew hands perfectly fine, they were "hard" and she "hated drawing them." Hmmmm...well, never one to shy away from a challenge, I tried to think of a way we could practice drawing hands in a way that seemed fun. 

This spells "ART."

So, here's what we did:

The first week, we spent practicing drawing hands in different positions. I found this great tutorial online at Neon Dragon Art that I thought would work well to illustrate the anatomy of the hand as well as seeing a hand as a 3D form from the beginning. We worked our way through the different variations Jessica "Neon Dragon" Peffer presented, using our own hands as "models." It is quite difficult to draw something as complex as the human hand--especially when you don't want to! But we kept trying and trying. We had a couple shaky starts and we needed to keep remembering to look at our 3D models--our own hand, and draw what we saw, not what we thought was there.

Once my student was confident drawing hands in a variety of positions, I brought out the American Sign Language chart that shows the letters of the alphabet using photos of hands. We practiced the letters and she chose a word she wanted illustrate. At first she chose "CREATE" but the thought of drawing 5 more hands (one for each letter of the word) proved too much so she settled on "ART" instead.

She did a great job drawing the hands in pencil and then outlining them in Sharpie. For the background, she chose to do a Jackson Pollock-inspired drippy painting using watercolors and temperas that she drizzles and splattered all over. The colors were custom-mixed--she had a plan--they are her favorite colors.

Once everything was done, she brought the pieces together (making sure the hands were in the correct order). She was very happy with her piece (as am I!) and *hopefully* she'd say it isn't too bad drawing hands after all.

Peach-Faced Lovebird in Oil Pastels

About four years ago, my husband was hanging out in his garage with the doors open and in flew this little guy...a peach-faced lovebird! My hubby nabbed him and brought him in to me (no, I didn't believe the bird just FLEW into his shop...). Originally from Africa, this lovebird was far from home showing up in New Hampshire! We put ads in the papers, but never found his owners. "Bird," yep, that's his name, became a part of our family. The children love him and he seems to not mind the noise and activity that four children seem to create.

This isn't my Bird, but he looks just like this!

One of my younger art students loves animals, so I thought drawing Bird would be a great idea! My student had enjoyed working with craypas and baby oil on watercolor paper, so we used that technique. I had downloaded some images of peach-faced lovebirds to have on hand just in case Bird was being tempermental and we set up camp in front of his cage to observe and draw.

Here's my student with our model.

Bird must have loved the attention because he sat there on his perch and looked very handsome! When we looked away too long, he started performing and perching on the side of the cage so he could look upside down at us while we worked. What a great reminder to look at the subject you are drawing more than your paper!

Her drawings came out lovely--here's the final one where she used oil pastels for the bird and then watercolor pencils with a bit of water to soften the edges to create a nice, outdoorsy atmosphere for Bird.

Who would believe a bird could come in such colors!
It's nice to see Bird outdoors instead of behind the bars of the cage.

Lemon Still Life

A couple weeks back I started summer lessons working with a very talented young lady...this little girl is going into third grade in the fall and over the summer we'll be working on refining her drawing skills. I'm so excited to be working with her!

For our first lesson, I decided to have her do a still life with lemons. The lesson was a nice way for us to chat and get to know one another while talking about art concepts such as shape, form, balance, symmetry and so much more! She was very interested in drawing the lemon segments and we had a wonderful discussion about the colors we saw in the lemon peel and the shadows!

Lemons on drawing paper using colored pencils

I had her sketch the lemons using graphite and then add color using watercolor pencils. She could then soften the color by adding water (she didn't want to--she liked the look of the pencil lines).

We finished that up pretty quickly and I introduced her to a new (to me) technique I have been laying around with. We tried out this new technique using just one lemon, to keep it simple. She drew the lemon using craypas, or oil pastels, and then used baby oil on a Q-tip to smudge the colors and blend them. Boy, I remember using turpentine with oil pastels in high school-YUCK! What a smell and mess (at least for this watercolorist!).

She then used watercolor to add a wash of color to the background (the oil pastels act as a resist for the watercolor, so she could just paint over the entire image). She really enjoyed working with that medium and we decided our next lesson would use that technique. I can't wait!

Lemon done using the craypas/baby oil technique on watercolor paper