Developing Visual Studies: Hand Impairment // Henri Matisse

My next set of visual studies exploring physical impairment was based on hands.

I was inspired by Henri Matisse and his interesting technique of long stick drawing. Even as Matisse grew older, he continued to draw using the long stick method from his bed.

This method applies to function in two different ways; it can be seen as aided-function (because it aided Matisse when he was bed-ridden) but also as impairing function (because it’s harder to draw using the long stick method rather than using your hands).

This was the A1 scale piece using the long stick technique and I personally think that it shows physical impairment of the hands through the use of impairing my own hands to create it. I think it displays malfunction through the crooked appearance of the shapes of the hands which could be similar to an actual condition.
I really liked the way the long stick creates shapes that you weren’t expecting, so I think this could be a technique I could use in my design process to create impaired shapes.

My next study was using my non-dominant hand, so again I think it’s a different form of malfunction that I think unconventional functional function best describes it. What I mean by this is that, unless you are ambidextrous, our ‘other hand’ has simply not been trained to function the way our other most dominant hand. I wanted to see what sort of piece this technique could create, so I used my left hand on an A3 piece of paper for maximum difficulty.

What I found was that the actual drawing wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I would have thought there would be more uneven curves and shapes and that it would be very messy. While some of that may be true, I think the representation is accurate to the idea of an untrained/unconventional function. It still works the same except it just needs a little more practice and soon it will be as good as the other. That concept applies to how the drawing reflects the level of learned function the hand has completed.

Overall I enjoyed using different ways to impair my hands to create visual studies because it has shown me ways that I can create impaired shapes by impairing myself. I may use this technique later on when I design shapes for my final garment idea, as an alternative to creating a malfunctioning garment.