article: Hands On Art -- Week One | written down

This is a page that was inspired by the week one prompt. I was thinking about how I could visually introduce myself to someone I hadn’t met, which led to thoughts of the first thing that I often do when introducing myself in the real world – extend my hand. But how would a hand tell anyone anything about me, if I wasn’t attached to it? Well, perhaps if I provided a helpful how-to-read-palms chart, they could read between the lines.

So I had my husband take a picture of my hand, then I scribbled some arcane symbols on various papers and scanned them. I layered copies of the scribbles onto the photo of my hand, and then decided to be more blatant about the whole thing and add words describing myself: “Writer, Workaholic, Snarky, Creative, Loner, Bibliophile, Traveler, Gypsy, Does Not Play Well With Others, Techno-Geek, Pagan, Tendency to Brood, Obsessive, Curious, Creative, Psychic, Empathetic, Stubborn…” that about sums me up. I then subjected the image to various indignities in Photoshop, and added a background and a border from Dover’s Henna Designs book. I may go back into this and add more stuff later as the spirit moves me … or not.

I expect to work primarily in digital for this project, as I’m comfortable with the “medium” but it still challenges me. (Does anyone really know Photoshop?). I do tend to paint/draw/write/distress material for my digital projects so I also get to enjoy the more tactile thrill of mucking around with supplies. I plan on printing my pages out onto watercolor paper and binding them… maybe. Not really sure about that yet.

In real life I’m a writer, usually of tech and/or travel stories. I live in NYC. I look forward to seeing everyone’s work over the next few months. Thank you, Shimelle!

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