Hands

I have to draw 150 hands and 150 feet for my basic drawing one class.. at first I thought I was going to do complete and utter crap, because, before this class, I've never been good with drawing realism aside from (some) trees.

I feel like I'm improving, but I'd really like some critiquing/pointers/opinions.  I think some are really bad, while others are actually decent.  And some I add more details into, others are really basic.  I'm just trying things out to see what looks better, and what I may need to work on and so on.

 

I only have 17 done at this point, and I've put them in two albums on photobucket (cause I am trying to do 10 a page on my big sketch pad).

<a href="http://s480.beta.photobucket.com/user/taylynne/library/hands/first%2010">Here are the first 10</a>

<a href="http://s480.beta.photobucket.com/user/taylynne/library/hands/second%2010"> And the other 7</a>

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I'd love to know which look the worse, and which look the best (especially ones that look best, I want to see what I have done right.. it's a bit more obvious which are bad I think).
Thanks a lot in advance :)  I'll have more later if you guys don't mind checking them out later!
Oh and they're all my hand, I just pose it and try my best to keep it in place for however long I may need.

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EDIT:

I'd like to apologize also for some quality of the photos.  They're all drawn on a 18 x 24 sketch pad so I haven't really been able to scan them for better quality. :(

Hi Taylynne,

I had a look at your drawings and I think you are already improving yourself if you compare the first 10 with the other 7.

It looks to me that the drawings from the back of the hand are more accurate than the drawings from the inside/palm of the hand. Everything is there as it should be, but I think if you would add more depth and volume to the fingers pointing towards you, it will improve even more. Maybe it will help you if you build it up out of block or cylinder shapes first, and determine for each part the direction the part goes. That way it is easier to avoid the drawing from becoming flat.

I found this link quite useful, although it looks like just some random notes and sketches, and more comic style on hands and feet, they do show direction and volume. Worth a look at.

http://radhowto.blogspot.nl/2011/06/class-4-demo.html

keep up the good work! and hopefully this advice is useful for you.

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Hello illographer,
Thanks a lot for the tips.  I agree that adding depth would definitely help, I just get stuck on it sometimes (or move too much and the lighting of it changes!)  I will definitely try using either of those shapes to build it up.

I don't feel like you can draw some poses and have them look natural if you don't build it up and add depth: it'll just look disproportionate and weird... Which is why I've avoided some poses so far, because I haven't been too sure of how to build it up well.
I'll try it out and share some more later! Thank you again :)

Some of the hands are good. For the third one, the third and pinky fingers are kind of straight, the index and middle fingers are fat. For the sixth one, the thumb is too far down from the hand. Same goes for the fourth one, the thumb is far down. In the second set, you've improved nicely. For the third one in the second set, the middle segment on the index finger is a bit short.

There are some artists who have trouble with hands and feet, even me.

Illographer is right, depth and shading is required for your drawing. Also, you should find and push the angles of the hands and feet, they don't need to be straight lines.

Good luck and keep trying. :)

Hey there, good points, and I agree the set of 7 are a little better and wee bit more detailed than the 10 (seem more linear sketches.)

I can only suggest something I do when sketching realism: I use points of reference to help with proportion eg: the knuckle of the bent thumb is the width of the index finger (when curled over it) between first and second knuckle of that finger.  Look closely at what you are sketching and use the creases/knuckles etc as reference for size etc.

Hope that makes some sense haha...mostly the key thing is to really LOOK at what you are drawing, every point is relative so once you find a point to begin a section of your sketch to use as a starting point/reference, you will find with practice that things begin to fall into place and makes sense :)

Another fun exercise you can try is drawing something up-side-down (a photo of a hand, say)....your brain will just draw the lines etc, rather than looking at it and "knowing" it's a hand/fist etc. ...you can try this with other things and see how it can help you open up to draw more freely!!

good luck! just keep working at it :)