shanmonster | Portrait of My Hand

This project, which I've called Portrait of My Hand, is a two-part piece. I first composed my legs and hand against a tile background with filtered sunlight for lighting. I wanted to include strong diagonals in my composition, so I arranged the diagonals of my hand and legs in contrast with the strong parallel lines of the tile. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I took the digital photo and converted it to a grey-scale image.

I printed out the image on a laser printer, and coloured the reverse of the image with charcoal. Then I taped the image in place on top of heavy drawing paper, and traced out the outlines with a ballpoint pen. This left a line drawing of the portrait on the drawing paper.

Next, I cut out and tore a variety of shapes and strips from several newspapers, sorting them into piles of similar darkness/lightness values.

I used mucilage to place the bits of newsprint onto the drawing paper until the photograph had been reproduced in collage. This was a time-consuming process.

The image is perplexing to look at, with different elements popping forward and backward, often interchangeably. The fingers stand out in stark contrast, but sometimes they move forward or retreat behind the tile in a surreal method, with nods to Escher. The hand dissolves into a mash of words behind a strong, dark set of knuckles.

The line between the tiles is an extended series of ellipses, indicating there is always far more to be said.