Shared Hands Project

An arty friend suggested that three of us do a fun mixed media project last fall. The idea was to make four hands--three right hands (we would each get one of the right) and one left hand, that would be the shared art project. We were to each add something to the hand then mail it back to the originator.

I traced my hands onto hot pressed watercolor paper and made three similar right ones and one left.

Click here for the link to my post about the start of the project, which I posted on January 9.

My artistic influence was the beautiful east Indian henna "tattoos" that are painted on women's hands for special occasions. I tried to create that effect with the stencils and colors I chose.

For the left, I used a stencil with molding paste, and after it dried, painted it partially with my favorite shade of turquoise acrylic. The stencil was one that I had used on the other three. I popped it in the mail and wondered how it would look when it was returned. I eagerly waited for the mailman to bring me the other people's art, and for my final, finished left hand to arrive. It was a loooong wait.

One of the artists decided to make a book of hands as the shared project, and made us each individual clay hands with an east Indian influence. The other artist made each of us a small art quilt of her hand, that is absolutely gorgeous and intricately made. There was a bit of confusion about who should mail what to whom and when.

There were holiday and health delays, but yesterday the finished left hand arrived, and I love it!

The left hand was done collaboratively by three artists; the right hand is one of three similar I kept for myself.

I love the way the paints and inks ran and created a marbled effect, and also the index finger that goes from blue to white with random dots, and ends in a pink nail. The font on the word Bloom is so pretty, as is the hand lettering on Joy. On the right, I used square mini-brads for texture. My art friends adhered dimensional stars which add a subtle texture to the turquoise hand.

I also couldn't resist drawing and painting and stenciling and stamping on both sides of the "hand book" pages that I made for my friend Karen. She traced her hand on some heavy watercolor paper and mailed it to me.  I used some of my favorite Artistcellar stencils and stamps from Ink Pad NYC and Julie Fei-Fan Balzer.

Top of Karen's left "book hand", which was unplanned and instinctively stamped, stenciled and painted.

This was the unfinished left hand that was mailed out.

These are the three right hands. Artistcellar pocket stencil words were used.

Reverse side (palm) of Karen's "hand book" page.

Feeling Blue

When Marie Johansen suggested that we revisit the typography theme for our next Arts in the Cards ReVisioned http://artsinthecardsrevisioned.blogspot.com/ project, I had an idea of what I wanted to do--Character Study, in the style of Lisa Occhipinti. http://www.locchipinti.com/ Lisa wrote an article for ClothPaperScissors back in May/June 2010...it was one of those articles that I just couldn't forget, and I had been meaning to give her technique a try. The idea was to use text not to say something that the viewer would read, but just to appreciate a letter, or a part of a letter as a design element. The concept really appealed to me--I am a writer and magazine/newspaper layout designer and on a daily basis I work with, and love, fonts. I had a 'duh' moment when I realized what a good idea it was to use just letters, or just a swoop of a q or point of an M, as a design element. And it only took me two years to find the time to try out her technique! However, it was harder than I thought. For this challenge, we threw all rules out, so I was free to choose any size, any material, anything at all that had a theme of typography. I chose a favorite size, 12" x 12" and a favorite material, paper. I do love quilting and fabric, but paper behaves so much better--it doesn't wiggle, doesn't bleed when you paint it (unless you want it to) and is easier to cut.

I studied Lisa's guide, and began with choosing some letters and fonts, arranging them in Photoshop, printing them out, cutting them, and coloring them. I chose a horizontal design and a blue color theme, with water and waves in mind. I added painted strips of paper from my husbands newspaper to honor him (he has been a journalist and publisher for many years), a strip of fabric with the name and copyright in the selvedge from the company I used to work for (Leon Rosenblatt), some woven, rustic ribbon from Tinsel Trading, and painted some stripes with energy and om symbols silkscreened and stamped on. I couldn't resist adding my favorite Buddha quote, which I printed on Extravorganza. I used, along with the fabric and paper, a base of coquille watercolor paper, Derwent blocks, and Lumiere paint. It took a lot of puttering, painting and repainting, and many, many trials and errors before I had a piece that I was fairly happy with.