Tinfoil painting

Hand-painted Hand, 24" by 24", acrylic on canvas, 2011

For this assignment, I created a cast of my right hand out of tinfoil and used that as the subject for my painting. I thought it would be interesting to paint my right hand with my right hand. The right hand is palm down coming from the top edge of the canvas. The placement of the hand this way is the least interpretive (ie. less recognized gesture) so the viewer can experience the shades and forms on the picture. I wanted to play with the notion of flat versus 3d and that’s why there’s no perspective to the composition: a shallow space. I started to layout the tones placing the darkest darks and the lightest lights. I had to simplify the planes of the tinfoil cast so that I could get a sense of the movement of the composition. I also thought it would be interesting to develop one section of the canvas and leave the rest very loose. I feel this gives the composition a more definite focal point. I used a mix of Cadmium orange and Ultramarine blue to create the greys for my mid-tones. This worked quite well with the “neutral” black I used to block in the forms because it enhanced the contrast of warm and cool greys. I wanted to create a contrast of thick and thin as well with the detailed area built-up with thick paint and the rest a loose wash. As a final touch, I applied some paint to the canvas by putting paint on some crumpled tinfoil, put it against the canvas, and then rubbed the back to get the actual texture.