Thoughts on Drawing Hands Part 1

Getting better at drawing hands is one of the top goals for every beginning artist that I know. When it comes to expression, emotion, and character, hands are second only to the face. However, for most people, they're dense little cluster of foreshortening that turn into a little ball of sad sausages. To make matters worse, experienced clients, editors, and other artists will consciously look for the way you draw hands to quickly gauge your skill level.

For this reason, I made it my April goal to improve my skill at drawing hands by doing 100 life size sketches of hands drawn from life. I'm proud to say that I've met my goal! This post series is about the different methods I used and liked to learn/draw hands quickly.

I want to make make it clear before we begin that I am not claiming to be a master at hands. I still have many 1,000's of bad hands to draw before I'd consider myself good. These two posts are mostly about my thought process.

On a quick side note, if you want to check out a master at drawing hands look to Bouguereau. His hands are insane!!

Check out those digits!

So far, I've come across 3 anatomy books that I really like and would recommend.

Bridgeman's guide is must have. It's been in circulation since the 20's! That's how you know that it's good. The main idea of the book is to learn to break down the body into it's component parts. (All the way to the bones themselves when necessary). 

Anatomy for the Artist is jam packed with hi resolution images of both male and female nude models. Like Bridgeman's guide, it breaks the body into parts, but it also comes with a master class an assignments for each one. The language is very clear and concise as well. 

An entire book on hands. While the illustration is a bit stylized, there is a lot to learn in this book.  I'm still working through it.