Drawing Hands
Drawing Hands
My daughter texted me from the doctor’s office the other day. She was in the waiting room with one of the grandkids and she sent me this photo:
My granddaughter told her, “See Mom? ‘Cause I looked at my hands and drew all the lines.”
I replied, “Cool! She’s left handed, I didn’t know.”
My daughter answered, “Wait, how can you tell she’s left handed? We’ve seen her use both so I don’t know if she’s settled into one or the other yet. Oh, I get it. I wouldn’t have noticed that if you hadn’t said!”
It must come from all the practice drawing my own non-dominant hand.
Hands are right up there at the top of the list of things people think of as hard to draw. But as you learn and practice the foundational skills you realize that no one thing is harder to draw than any other. You’re not drawing “things,” you’re drawing shapes.
One of the most useful skills for artists is perceiving the angles that connect the extreme points. In these hand sketches you can see the first initial angles that help locate the tips of the fingers and the edges of the hand.
And with hands you always have a model to look at, with infinite poses. To sketch your drawing hand just use your phone and take a reference photo.
Handy App
It lets you pose a 3D hand, turn it around, and control the lighting. There are also heads and additional models you can purchase.
Now you have no more excuses. Time to draw!
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