Art Making/Material Exploration: Exploring Line

Drawn with dominant hand

Drawn with non-dominant hand

1. What was it like using your hand as subject matter for a drawing?

I have always had a hard time drawing hands but this time both of my drawings actually look like hands.  When I would have to draw hands in high school art classes or middle school art classes, the drawing barely resembled a hand.  I am not sure why I have a harder time drawing hands than anything else.

2. What media did you select - pencil or charcoal? Why?

I used pencil because charcoal is too messy for me to use.  I would end up getting charcoal all over the sides of my hands and then it would smear all over the drawing.  Also, we didn't have charcoal at home and I didn't want to go out and get some if I was only going to use it a few times.

3. How did it feel to create a drawing with your non-dominant hand?

It felt weird drawing with my non-dominant hand.  I am ambidextrous with most things but drawing is not one of them.  I was most surprised that my drawing with my non-dominant hand actually came out looking like a hand.

4. Compare and contrast your final drawings. Do you think they are successful studies?

I think both are successful studies.  However, I feel like my dominate had did a better job drawing the outline of the hand.  The outline of the hand drawn with my non-dominate hand looks shaky compared to the other.

5. Would you consider using your non-dominant hand to create artwork in the future?
I don't think I would use my non-dominate hand to create this type of artwork in the future because it took a lot longer to draw a hand with my non-dominant hand compared to my dominant hand.  I made many more mistakes that had to be erased with my non-dominant hand.  However, I liked the shading I did with my non-dominate hand, so I might considering shading that way from now on.

Video Review

1. Explain why you selected the video you choose from the selection listed above.
 I selected the video Cairo Museum because I have always been interested in King Tut.  Also, the Cairo Museum has only of the largest collections of artifacts in the world.  This makes it even more intriguing to learn about.


2. For each video list/discuss the key concepts you learned.

For the video More Human Than Human, I learned that nomads moved around in large groups often.  This made it hard to find their works of art from that time period.  Also, the statue The Venus of Willendorf, was the first statue to ever depict a human.  After it was found, archaeologists started to find more statues of humans that had the same exaggerated features as The Venus of Willendorf.  The second big thing I learned from this video was that Egyptians carved unrealistic pictures of the human body.  They did this because they wanted to show the interesting parts of the body from the right angle.

 For the video Cairo Museum, I learned that Egyptians were very advanced for their time period.  They performed surgery on people if they lost appendages.  For example, on man lost a toe and they replaced his toe with a look-a-like toe for him to walk.  Also, the Egyptians decided to send mummified kings done the banks of the Nile river to their final resting place.  This ended up sending them to the now Cairo Museum.

3. How do the videos relate to the readings in the text?
The text talked about the statue The Venus of Willendorf.  It was created during the Paleolithic time period about 25,000 years ago.  They feel statues were made like this to promote pregnancy and childbirth.  However, today experts feel that it is unlikely that a single simple explanation can account for all of them.

The text also talked about the typical pose of Egyptian art.  When they depicted an important person, the Egyptian artist tried to show each part of the body from the best angle so it could be "read" clearly by the viewer.


4. What is your opinion of the films? How do they add depth to understanding of the readings and art concepts?
I felt that both films were interesting to watch because we don't learn about ancient civilizations from an art standpoint in school.  Also, the More Human Than Human video helped me understand where the first statues of humans came from and possibly why they were created.  The video about the Cairo Museum helped me understand more about why Egyptians did what they did during their time period.