The Limb

The Anatomy of the Hand and the Arm

This project had come from an idea from a previous project in my screen printing class.  that idea of the project revolved around a sculpture or fixture being made, and displayed outside. Moreover, the project was a blueprint for what could be.  I wanted to do a huge hand which would display multiple layers of a human hand, thus it would be transparent. My problem here was that i didnt realize how many layers i needed while printing. The anatomy of the hand, or the anatomy of any body part is very complex. Once i was done printing that project, i wasn't happy with the end result. For me, at least, it look like a very basic, simple print of the anatomy of a hand. I am very detail oriented and that detail i wanted didn't occur.

The anatomy of the body has been an interest since high school. Ive always been blown away on how complicated the human body really is. I think a lot of people miss the fact on how convoluted our bodies are and every piece works together.  I chose the hand, because i find that the hand is one of the complex parts of your body.

After some research through the internet and some anatomy books. I started sketch out how i wanted my hand to look. My main goal was to enable the viewer to see through the layers of the hand. While printing, i would also print the layers of the hand in steps. For example, i'd start with the bone, then move to the muscle, tendons, and then the veins. So here are some of the sketch and plans for printing the hand.



Overall, i used a around 6 to 8 layers of color for each part of the hand. There were 4 parts; bones, tendons, muscles and viens. Each layer had at least 2 layers of color. One color would be a solid shape, and then the next color would define or outline that shape. For example, the bone structure was at first, at white color of a the shape of the bone. Next came a greyish layer that outlined the bone structure (example is the last picture). Registration is the hardest part because you want and need everything lined up perfectly. Most of the layers turned out as i wanted, but printing and registering the veins was a bit harder. I had made the veins very complicated and thin, so registration was a bit harder for this layer. Anyway, here are pictures of the final edition. I had also printed on pieces of wood and a piece of a plastic window.