Tracking Artist Hand Movements

Recently we started a new project to analyze hand movements of artists while they are drawing on a physical drawing canvas. The goal of this project is to uncover the latent elements of the creative process of artists while they draw on a canvas and combine them with the final static art piece to create a novel art experience. To achieve this we capture the hand movements of the artists while they are engaged in the drawing process. Then the captured information is displayed as part of a visualization that will be superposed into the actual art piece to create dynamic form of art.

In our first experiment we used a LEAP motion sensor to capture the finger and palm position of the right hand(drawing hand) of artist while they draw on a paper mounted in easel. Then we create a dynamic visualization by plotting the angle between the right index finger and the center of the palm over the period of drawing.

Since the LEAP’s spatial location data is not very accurate, now we are building a new experiment setup. The new system is composed of an easel with two cameras: one to capture the vertical position of the drawing instrument and a second one that captures its horizontal position. A LEAP motion sensor is also used to track the finger and palm during the drawing process. At the end LEAP’s data will be combined with data captured from 2 cameras accurately re-produce the finger and palm movements of the artists. Following image shows our new setup.