On your own Few materials

The Hand: Seeing Like an Artist

Your own hand, its outline and the space around it: drawing by looking like an artist.

What the child does

Pupils trace round their own hand, look at the space between the fingers and, as Cézanne suggested, break it down into simple shapes. Then they search for the lines with light strokes, confirm them with confident lines and build light and shade with a five-tone scale. Every hand, and every drawing, is different.

Age: Ages 10–14Grade 5 / Year 6 – Grade 8 / Year 9
Time: 45–60 minutes
Format: A4 PDF

Hear how the mission begins

Family £1.99 Sheet + grown-up guide. For personal and family use. Classroom £4.99 + classroom page: 45-minute lesson, variations, National Curriculum links. Photocopy for your pupils (non-commercial use). Workshop £9.99 + classroom page. For paid workshops, classes and clubs at one address (cafés, play centres, holiday clubs). Valid for 1 month, unlimited prints for participants.

Instant PDF after payment, also by e-mail · Print as often as you like

What’s inside

The mission sheet, illustrated by Barti
The grown-up guide: materials, preparation, what it develops, questions for afterwards
An easier and a harder version
A QR code: Barti tells the mission out loud
With the Classroom or Workshop licence: a ready 45-minute lesson, with variations and curriculum links
A page with the six steps illustrated

Materials

A 2B pencil
A sheet of white paper (A4, or better still A3)
An eraser (optional: the searching lines can stay)

What it develops

Observation — looks at the hand and at the space around it and between the fingers, not only the outline
Proportion — simplifies the hand into geometric shapes measured against each other
Line quality — tells searching lines from confident ones, and chooses when to use each
Tone — builds a five-tone scale and uses it in the drawing