branching faith

This is another series on hands utilizing different mediums.

The first movement has a base of pastels rubbed into the paper. The image of hands branching towards the heavens was created by using an artist's eraser to remove the pastel coloring. The interesting thing about this, is that when I began this piece, I had been torn between the idea of creating a tree or continuing with hands. I thought that I had settled on a tree, but hands still came through.

With this second movement I added outline in charcoal, fingernails, hand bones, knuckle wrinkles and the beginnings of shading. Lower perimeter "ground" has also been added to anchor the tree.

The final movement works to add dimension to the piece through contour drawing, emphasized outline and heavier shading. The proportion of the second finger has also been addressed. With the image of the hands popping out more distinctly, the tree became more of a whisper. To bring this back out, while maintaining its position as secondary, braches, leaves and fruit were added with a medium/light weight.