50 Renderings
I chose the human hand as my “object”. I felt it represents a quintessential aspect of dasein, and this was a concept I wanted to explore further.
Object, medium, and tool at the same time, the hand is an extension of our “being”, by which we come to know the world, as well as by which we make ourselves known in that world.
Therefore, I started with an image of Cueva de los Manos (Cave of Hands) to remind myself of the importance of hands existentially — and our ancestors still waving hello to us from a 10,000 years ago.
Sketches on Paper (1–33)
I experimented with different mark-making techniques, different drawing tools, and distinct textures. I tried out some more abstractions of hands — like cartoony or disproportionate hands. One of the interesting ideas that came up, was a Mickey mouse hand (as a cultural identifier) in my 4th sketch.
As I progressed in my sketches, they started getting more and more abstract. I broke the hands out into shapes, lines, silhouettes. In number 24, I join two pens together and draw a double image. 25 and 26 become more robotic and artificial. The construction contains screws, balls, machinery and so on, but it still retains the human shape and that primitive connection. I thought this was an interesting relationship — that of human and machine.
As for tools, so far I had used pencil, gel pen, ball pen, sketch pen, brush pen, and marker.
I went on to further experiment with soft and hard charcoal, conte, and pastel as well. Number 32 is an outline trace of my own hand — a proof of my dasein, mimicking the cave paintings of old. For another sketch, I decided to represent the hand in the context of its skeletal anatomy.
Cutouts and Mixed-media (34–38)
I was running out of ideas on paper, so I started using different media to represent a hand. Box paper, crumpled paper, torn paper, barcode stickers, and even coins… I looked for new themes, textures and visual styles.
Light and Shadow (39–40)
Next, I decided to explore the more ephemeral representations —by casting a shadow and/or letting light pass.
Digital and 3D (41–50)
Finally, I moved on to digital representations. I used the pen tool in Illustrator to achieve a poster like vector image, and brush tool in Photoshop to paint a rasterized image. Then, I used Maya to make 3D model of a hand and applied different materials, lights and rendering settings to it.
Learning Outcomes
Throughout the process, although the object (hand) remains the same, the quality of its materiality, context, aesthetic and purpose keeps changing. The hand made out of coins evokes a different teleology than a hand casting a shadow. The dasein or “being-ness” of each rendering is defined by its constituents (materials, tools, textures), yet it is not the constituents themselves. Each rendering exists as a unique entity— materially and conceptually.
I should also mention that during the process of creating these, I was not thinking about what is the uniqueness of each rendering. Instead, I was spontaneously seeking new materials, ideas, aesthetics and tools to express the single object — hand. In a way, each rendering is an imprint of my own hand’s being (dasein), impressed upon by the materials, tools and techniques I use to convey it. The 50 renderings comprise my own Cave of Hands.
