🌱 Seed 🌱 Mapping your hand
Cup your palm and look into your hand at all the wrinkles formed.
Try out different positions of the hand. Which makes a more interesting drawing?
Draw the lines with a sharp pencil or fine liner pen, like a complex roadmap, just the internal lines without the outline of your hand.
This is also a kind of self-portrait.
Extension: Try making the line drawing on top of another image, a road map, a page of writing, a photograph, something that says something about you... make sure your lines contrast enough with the image underneath to be visible.
This seed uses a mapping strategy with less logic, more metaphor. By removing the external shape of the hand and focusing on only the internal lines it is also a form of distillation and abstraction.
The activity of making prints from these drawings can be a nice way to introduce a new technique: transfer the drawing using carbon paper onto a printing matrix ( linoleum, plexiglass, styrofoam, easy print) to make a dry point etching or lino print.
Artist link: Kathy Prendergast
Born in Dublin in 1958, Kathy Prendergast lives and works in London.
"Geography, personal or otherwise, is a recurring theme in Prendergast’s work. She has been primarily considered as a sculptor, although her practice includes both two- and three-dimensional work, and drawing. She has used diverse materials, from graphite and watercolour to wool, fabric, human hair, chalk, fibreglass and painted bronze."
read more of her biography here
Visit her page at Tate gallery
Inquiry Questions
How is this a kind of self portrait?
Why is this a form of mapping?
What other materials could you translate this too?