Sign Language. :)

Looking at communicating with hand movements lead me to explore sign language, One of the more obvious ways of communicating using your hands, obvious? yes.....easy?..no.

I took the alphabet to begin with and started looking at all the different signs for each letter

 I decided to experiment with spelling words using pictures of the letters.

MOVE!

Movement and Motion.

Drawing these hands was good but I thought....why not see the real thing?

I got in touch with a woman at home in Donegal who teaches sign language. I asked her to sign the spelling of movement and motion for me while I photographed it.

 M

 O

 T

 I

 O

 N

  A

  N

  D

 M

 O

 V

 E 

 M

  E

 N

 T

 I had some video footage from this day too but it doesn't seem to be anywhere to be found...:( If it turns up ill be sure to post it :)

ok so the actual video footage.....gone....cant understand how...:( but i decided to make up for it by creating this little almost stop motion type video with the photos above....just thought id experiment a little with making videos :)

Its a wee bit short i know...but it was worth a try..:)

Hand movements, Gestures, Communication and all that..:)

Hand movements? Gestures? It's all communication if you think about it..

All of our movements have meaning. Each hand movement or gesture we make means something to someone.

 

 

Photos from my contextual and sketchbook exploring hand gestures.

One of the pictures that i found had given me an idea for a sculpture and/or a painting.

I started into the sculpture idea first.

The initial idea was to make a pair of shaking hands but out of 2 different materials. One from wire and the other from clay.

I started into the wire hand anyway...I modelled it around my own hand...wrapping the wire around each finger one by one...ouch..:(

 Then made a corset shaped piece for the main body of the hand.

 Once all the fingers and the body were completed all that was left was to attatch them. :)

When the hand was completed it looked like a small glove....it was quite interesting to look at so I decided against the clay hand and concentrated on just working with the wire.

After looking at this small hand i thought...hey....why not go bigger ?

I started into making a bigger version of this wire hand..

Having both hands side by side I thought....what could I do with 2 wire hands...hmmmm?

The Hand!

After exploring the muscles bones and joints of the arm I then got interested in the hand.
So I decided to look into the hand and how it works. I started with the bones muscles and joints...

A closer look at the hand

Drawings of the hand in oil pastel.

Drawing of my own hand in pencil and colouring pencil from my sketchbook.


After I looked at the hands and how they work I thought....hey.. we use our hands for almost everything don't we? So why not take a look into hand movements and gestures..:)

Movement and Motion...!

Soooo....movement and motion? Alot of ideas sprung to mind when I heard these words so i quickly began to mind map all possiblt ideas and thoughts.

After going through these thoughts and ideas I realised I was more drawn to the idea of body movemens than and others so i decided to explore it further.

I started to explore muscles and joints as they're vital for movement in the body. Istarted working on the muscles and joints of the arm....

Some pictures of muscles from my contextual.

Drawing in charcoal from my sketchbook of the muscles of the arm in different positions.

The concept of all the muscles, bones and joints in the body working together to make the body move gave me an idea for a painting. I drew up a rough sketch of what i wanted it to look like...

I wanted to show the muscles joints and bones all together but on the one figure.

My original intention was to keep the figures in black, white and grey with a coloured background but seeing it when it was painted i thought the figures kind of faded into the background.

 So i added colour to the figures too.

Giving colour to the figures gave them more depth so they stood out more.