Sometime in August, I decided I wanted to learn to draw hands and did a blogpost on my first few studies. I don’t have a daily goal, but over the days I draw them, sometimes a few a day, sometimes none for many days. While the drawings aren’t looking that different from day to day, I’m slowly understanding what the hand does, and what to look for in trying to capture the feel of a living, moving hand.
Here are some studies.
Gesture, hands that speak, hands that tell stories and look alive and moving. These are all important to me, so I’m working with an approach I use when drawing people in motion. Here is an attempt to capture it in stages.
My first three lines on the paper are gestural: Line 1 is the main gesture. Line 2 is a line that counterbalances the first line, a line that provides some tension and interest to line 1. Line 3? A little fuzzier: here it captures the volume of the palm and keeps me from thinking flat.
I like this bit of the process, it reinforces the action for me, and keeps the hand alive. And it reminds me a little if the Japanese flower-arranging form of Ikebana. (although that hold far more spiritual meaning in it’s three lines) After that, I build the actual structure of the palm and fingers over my gesture lines.
It’s a learning process and I’m making my way around gathering bits and pieces of learning and information from different sources, but mostly just drawing and looking a lot. I’m tagging these studies with #drawhundredhands on instagram.
Suhita
I am loving this and feel inspired at the learning process that you are sharing with us.
Thanks so much
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Your sketches of hands are so lively and really helpful to look at. What a great practice!
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It’s a great project to follow. I love seeing your gesture lines which really make the hands come alive.
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Thanks Shari, it’s been interesting to be looking at hands this closely. Now onto those texting hands , which are so strange to draw…
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The hands are powerful. It looks like a very worthwhile project.
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Wonderful. Love your blogs. all of them. As for the hands – how about long fingered female, softer, hands?
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Thanks Bruce I guess I’ll get to those, eventually. I’m just more interested in what hands do and say, though…
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Are you drawing hands from photographs, family members or your hands shown in a mirror? They are gorgeous and so inspiring. Often when I don’t find inspiration elsewhere that motivates me, I draw my feet, with or without sandles. Thanks for sharing.
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Most of these hands are from photographs, a few from life. With hands especially photos let me get closeup and understand stuff, and then when I draw, say, cafe people, I can try and figure how that understanding would translate into a simplified shape.
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Great work!
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Love all of these… very expressive. Are you doing these from Internet images? Like I mentioned on Instagram, you gave me the idea to do hands as a theme for Inktober, and I was going to use my own hand because it’s so, uh, handy! 😉 But it makes more sense to get a variety of hand motions by using photos.
– Tina
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Tina, I’ll use some photos because they help me see hands from the viewpoint I most often see them: as someone elses hands 🙂 But I do a sketch or two of my own hand once in a while. This ones a no-rules kinda study thing for me
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Great! I like your Handstudies!
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These are beautiful Suhita. What I love is that they are ‘knuckle-y’ and muscular too, the way hands are. I feel like they’re more than gestures because you’ve observed the structure/framework of the hands – they feel like solid functioning hands. Beautiful! and lovely mixed media choices too!
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Meegan, thank you! Gesture is just the start of these sketches: once the initial gesture is down, I build structure on top of that. I think the mix keeps the pieces alive.
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Nice hands, they are very loose, and have a lot of flow.
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Thanks for your description of the process. You have a very powerful stroke, which I think makes all the difference. WOW, these are just great!
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