Zentangle Hands

This week, the class made a project that had many different aspects of art. The objective of the project was to have pure contour hands be the main focus, or the main objective, and also involve zentangle designs somewhere in the project. Many people, like myself, chose to have the zentangle designs on the pure contour hands, and then add something else to the piece. My hands were positioned to look like they were holding the strings of something, the puppet, and then I added the puppet to balance out the page and add my own ideas to the painting. I chose to have the zentangle on the hands because I thought that it would go along better with the pure contour of the hands, and that way I didn't have to involve it somewhere else where I may have wanted to put something else.

For this project, I chose to use acrylic paint on a canvas. First, I took a picture of my hands in the position I wanted to draw them in, and then I used that picture as a reference and drew the hands on my canvas, in pure contour form. I decided that I wanted a dark red background, so then I painted the background red, avoiding the hands because I wanted to keep them white. After that dried, I decided that I wanted to add more to my painting, so I sketched the shape of a puppet, sort-of in a relaxed and dragging position, and then painted that with acrylic paint as well. I kept the background and the puppet pretty abstract and simple because I didn't want to do anything too realistic. This is because I figured that a more simple and block-ish puppet and background would look better and wouldn't take away from the complex zentangles. I used acrylic because it is a medium that I am comfortable with, and I felt better about keeping the hands white with using acrylic paint because if I smudged paint anywhere on the hadns, it could easily be fixed with white paint. Or if I messed up with any of the zentangle designs I could go over them with white paint and almost start over.

My inspiration for this project came from my first project of last years class, the Beautiful Oops creation. I really enjoy drawing and creating marionette puppets because it is fun to play with their positions, and I feel like they can express so much emotion. I decided to do another puppet for this project because I think the hands made it a lot more interesting. I think it displays a lot more emotion and control that I wanted to express when the large hands are shown controlling the small puppet. This year, I decided to make the puppet myself, to represent how I, as a student, often feel like the control of my life is out of my hands, and at such a young age. Being in school, the amount of homework, and pressure to do everything right, everything exactly how everyone else does it, and the struggle of being compared to others who are ideal, is out of my hands, and into someone elses hands. I tried to go for one of my typical outfits to show how the puppet is me, but it came out to look more like a prisoner in one of the striped uniforms, which I actually like better. That also represents more control, being in a prison, (not saying that school is a prison, I appreciate and enjoy my education), possibly a mind prison where I feel I can't do anything wrong, or say anything wrong, without getting into trouble or being discarded.