I was reading an old Reader’s Digest magazine and came across an article about artist Guido Daniele. He does a lot of body painting work, but his hand paintings are probably what he is most well-known for. What is hand art exactly?
Here’s a picture that might help you understand:
Guido Daniele paints realistic images of animals onto people’s hands in different poses. What’s cool about this idea is that the hand has to be perfectly positioned or else the illusion is not as effective. If you look on his website, you can see how the artist creatively thought of different poses to represent a specific animal. The image of the deer (on the website), for example, required three hands: one for the head and two for the antlers.
Another cool thing that Daniele does is that he uses the lines of the hand to add to the piece. For example, in the image of the elephant below, he used the wrinkles and creases of the fingers to add to the piece, since that is how elephant skin looks like.
A lot of Daniele’s work is used for advertisements, so you may have seen his work in magazines or photos. I’ve definitely seen this At&t advertisement on the side of a bus before:
Unfortunately, photos are the only way he can document the pieces he creates, because the art is not permanent. The paint is easily washable.
This is another great example of how creative, art can really get. There really are no boundaries. Daniele’s work really impressed me and it looks like it takes alot of skill to do. I wonder how long it takes him to do one though.
The art is amazing! Daniele is very talented. I especially like the tree time-line. I think it would be cool if he put the environments of the animals for some of the pictures. That way, it would seem even more realistic.
I love how he used the lines on his fingers to his advantage when doing the elephant. It gave it a naturally real look. Does he sketch this out on paper before he starts on his hand? Is that how he plans the perfect position for his fingers? I was just trying to assume the position of his fingers on the first one, and it seems like you need a really good artist’s eye to know the position without applying the paint.. the position is very important, as he stated it gives it the “illusion,” but the paint over that position still seals the deal.
Nice catch!
Wow! This blew me away; all of the animals look so realistic and the amount of detail in impeccable. I think it’s fantastic that artwork can be made from truly anything, even our hands. I do wonder if the person have to keep their hand in the same position for a long period of time? When looking on his website, the pieces of Daniele’s that shocked me the most were those that don’t look like a hand. I think the four swans are the most incredible and it is probably his goal to make the onlooker believe they are looking at the picture of an animal, not just someone’s hand in the shape of it.
These have a very high “cool” factor. Quite imaginative and even expressive. I have seen some of these on billboards and find myself going back and forth between the image created and the means (the hands) used in the creation of the image. The “optical illusion” aspect of this is quite engaging in a way that the simple images (if not painted on hands) would not be.