ASL Hands

I am so excited to finally start a new project with 7th grade! Only seeing 7th and 8th grade twice a week makes it difficult to complete more than one project per term, especially during third term when we miss so many days of school due to snow. Now that their short story books are complete (pictures to come later this week), today we started a project called ASL Hands, or Sistine Chapel Hands, because I can't decide on which title I like best.

First I shared some background information about the great Michelangelo and we talked about the Sistine Chapel ceiling. If you are interested in seeing the slideshow, it is on the 7th grade page. The inspiration for this project stems from the famous artwork "Creation of Adam" in which Michelangelo paints the most gorgeous fresco hands. For this project, students will have the opportunity to work with compressed charcoal, which is my favorite 2-D medium, so I am excited to have students work with that in the upcoming weeks. The final product will be three hands, each one spelling out each one of the students' initials in American Sign Language. The drawings will be rendered realistically, using either the additive or subtractive charcoal method. Realistic drawings can sometimes be very daunting, so I like to start this project by working on a silly activity: blind drawing. Students had a blast this morning creating blind portraits of one another. I have students start with blind drawing so that they feel comfortable working with contour line. It is a great way to measure growth because students are happy to see the improvements that they make between the initial blind drawings and the next set of contour drawings.

After students took turns drawing pictures of one another, I had them practice blind drawings of their hands. They were instructed to look at their hands in different positions and to practice paying attention to the details (fingernails, knuckles, curves). Again, allowing students the time to draw their hands in a silly way, it will make it easier to branch into realistic drawing - we are taking baby steps to get there.

Students will probably start next class by drawing another blind drawing of their hand and move into drawing a contour hand while examining it closely. Once students have mastered hands, they'll experiment with using charcoal while drawing a simple geometric still life. Stay tuned for pictures in the upcoming weeks!