Bird in Hand – Original Drawing

Description

Bird in Hand

By Marc Alexander from his ‘Touch’ exhibition. ‘Bird in Hand’, Pencil on 300g Archival Paper, 10cm by 14cm, (2013).

Bird in Hand

The proverb ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ means that it’s better to hold onto something you have rather than take the risk of getting something better which may come to nothing.

‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ is one of the oldest and best-known proverbs in English. It came into the language in the 15th century, probably imported from other cultures. The proverb warns against taking unnecessary risks. It is better to keep what you have (a bird) than to risk getting more and ending with nothing (two birds which are out of your reach).

Touch Series

After a long season of producing portraits in oils, I returned for a while to the humble pencil. The ‘Touch’ exhibition, which opened at the Studio Gallery Kalk Bay on Friday June 14^th 2013 and ran until July 3^rd, was the result of that experience – a true celebration of the beauty and expressiveness of the human hand.

Several months before this show, a group of us artists got together in the studio to work on life drawings, and for me, hands are one of the most difficult parts of the human body to draw, so I decided to master this challenge by producing one hundred detailed drawings. Friends, family and even casual acquaintances, modeled their hands for me and in each drawing I tried to capture the unique character of each individual.

A great deal could be learned about a person just by observing their hands. For example, the slight hand gestures of a person in love, or the anxious mannerisms of the addicted smoker clutching his last cigarette, or the telltale scars and callouses which belong to a hard working laborer. The hands are young and old, lined and smooth and endlessly expressive and tell a hundred stories which are all captured in my hyper-realistic style.