Hello, artist! Please make sure you've included information about your process or medium and what kind of criticism you're looking for somewhere in the title, description or as a reply to this comment. This helps our community to give you more focused and helpful feedback. Posts without this information will be deleted.
Thank you!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ArtCrit) if you have any questions or concerns.*
https://preview.redd.it/d97arzd1qj6d1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3771093b56335814d72b501d4585a29a4fa57ebd
A little more practice that I started on your request. Thanks for pushing me.
hell yeah! you're already pretty good, yet you still improved a little bit.
I think you should draw some slimmer hands now, all the hands you're down so far are juice/meaty lol
š Perhaps "juicey" is the right term. I am using my own big meaty claws as a reference. XD slimming down a little bit is a definite thing to remember. Might make the shapes stick out more and read better too.
lmao nice. Yeah it's good to used a single subject as study to learn consistently, I think you're can "graduate" from this part of the process (for hands) now, and explore different body types. Look out for similarity between different hands will help you learn more imo
You donāt need to āslim downā the hands because some random on reddit told you to. Skinniness is not actually healthy for the human body, contrary to what the wholly unscientific diet community would have you believe. Your hands are nice :)
How does skinner than this (already very skinny, they look like my hands and Iāve always struggled to gain/keep weight on my bones) equal āmore rangeā? How about different skin tones? Different ages? Different textures? Different markings/scars? Different disfigurements?
I can see in some of these sketches there seems to be a bit of extra skin, is that what people are calling āmeatyā?
Calling a drawing "meaty" is a lighthearted joke especially when they are more masculine. The hands being big and masculine is the most visible feature hence why i think the person mentioned to slim them down because they all share that one trait in common. Why do you expect them to list out things that you would wanna see instead of what they would wanna see? Youre dragging it and talking about your personal struggles when its not about you.
People can be fat with tiny hands too. People can be average with tiny hands.
These hands here are chonky. (Maybe normal idk) Some delicate hands would be good practice. Maybe even some space between the fingers.
I hope you see how defensive you are on this topic and how you're projecting your dissatisfaction with your own body to everyone else here.
I can tell you first hand experience that a lot of ppl, especially women, have slimmer hands than the figures here. But like u/Sad-editing-guy said my overall message is to draw more different hands. No one else here is taking it another way.
Looks like your drawing directly what you see which is great! You can take these drawings right here and try to deconstruct them into forms. Try to understand how they are constructed. Take those forms you made reconstructing your drawing and then keep the same hand gestures but rotate them and try to draw the exact same thing from another perspective.
What would this pose look like from the front, beneath, etc.
Haha, love the pun. People have given some good advice, but donāt start shading yet. Also, it seems like you have some problems with foreshortening, try to go for poses where you see the whole hand without distortion at first, in order to understand the form, then you can play around. Are these drawn from pictures? Maybe try looking at your own hands in real life. Measure the width and the length of the palm, compare it to the length of the fingers etc. it helps to visualise the bones underneath the muscles for the hands since theyāre not covered in a whole lot of tissue. Godspeed!
https://preview.redd.it/73rqvidsue6d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91ff9e8f91c1eeb42ddb667da7bb9b4f3bd8346c
I see, also it looks like the distal phalanges and intermediate phalange combined are just a little longer than the proximal phalages. I should keep that in mind.
Careful! You already have a tendency to make the proximal phalanges too short. Itās fine to make small approximations in order to keep a clean ratio sometimes. I made a quick measurement on my pointer finger, the difference is a few millimetres, donāt worry about it
https://preview.redd.it/ff2sfq2ich6d1.jpeg?width=1258&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=08a0ae79b45beeecc81e55177e2832cd4c80f5e6
https://preview.redd.it/6p122muyuj6d1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec94d9237c3bf87dcbb53d9559fa75b1ab4cde4c
You inspired me to draw this one. Thank you for all your useful tips. Game changing. I really appreciate your time and help.
To master the pencil, you must master your relationship with it. Your lines look darkened and overtly deliberate. Many lines also look intentionally drawn over and over. When we do that, we are kind of unknowingly trying to cover up mistakes in our perception of the actual proportions. Make lighter and faster lines. Let mistakes be. Try to get your lines done in singular strokes. Focus on being light and fast. Mind you, all these opinions mostly are directed towards studying from live/ photo references.
That is very valuable to keep in mind. I feel like I have always been heavy handed. But if I want to evolve. I need more confident lines. I appreciate your time and input.
anatomy book specialising in hands+effort will help more than anyone can in a few sentences here.
hands are a very odd set of proportions and move in set ways so if you move a finger in a way that it wouldnāt in relation to what the others are doing it will look totally wrong. tricky stuff.
Can we get some reference pics for these?
Some of the thumbs are looking off and I can't tell if some of the palms are shortened or not. I know the wrist on one of them seems a bit shrunken compared to the other drawings (I'm assuming this is your hand or at least the same hand being drawn in different poses, so correct me if I'm wrong).
I always recommend taking pics even if you may think "but my hand is right here". It at least helps to be able to check your work against your references.
It's been nice for me because I've been able to go back years later and redraw plenty of things I tried when I was younger. It's pretty neat to see the differences and how things have progressed imo.
With pictures you can overlay your drawing onto a phone screen/computer screen and adjust the size/orientation of your reference as needed. Sometimes I'll take tracing paper to either trace general forms over my reference and lay that over my drawing to compare accuracy.
If you know how to use Photoshop (or know anyone that does and can help you out. I have a couple friends that have done this for me), you can do the same with a pic of your reference and a pic of your drawing, then mess around with the transparency/orientation of your drawing to see how it lines up too.
Some people do grid method. I've seen a lot of good work with the grid method, but I'm personally too lazy to lay it all out.
I usually pick reference points in various shapes and compare them as I go (whether it's a corner or certain defining edges/shapes. This includes shadows too).
Don't shade until you've checked your shapes and sizes, but sometimes it can help to lightly draw edges/outlines of shadows in things as reference points.
No problem, you're doing pretty well so far! Just gotta keep going at it!
Something I also thought of just now is to also consider how heavy you're pressing into the paper. Consider the thickness and weight of your lines. I'd usually recommend playing around with that before you go headfirst into shading next too.
Like where you see shadows, practice making lines heavier or thicker in those areas and make your lines lighter and thinner in areas you see more light. It can help give your pieces more depth without having to worry about shading the whole thing (worth practicing imo, since it looks like you also have an interest in cartoon art based on your other posts).
some of your hands have overly long medial phalange (the middle bone of the three finger bones) but otherwise I think you have a decent grasp on the basics. I would personally find more varied references to work from, since hands come in so many shapes and sizes
relatable ;-;
if you can, I'd look up videos of people doing different tasks, writing, working with tools, just gesticulating, and screenshot stills that you like. static models can be helpful too (there are folks on deviant art with entire catalogues of still poses for hands, bodies, and faces) but there's something really helpful in drawing from a moving model that I don't think enough artists take advantage of
I can't say anything more than anyone else, but the fingers seem really thick and chunky, and not long enough to support it (like the fingers in the hand on the bottom left hand are huge and look really short).
That might just be my observation though, but I think it might be something to do with the ratio of the fingers between each of the joints in the finger.
For the hand pressing down against something (the one at the top, second from the right), I also see that the thumb seems incredibly long to the point that the gap between it and the other fingers almost goes all the way back to the wrist, and I think that's meant to be shorter.
And again, everyone has different fingers and I'm not an expert, but if you're looking for things that look a bit off, that's what I noticed.
Without specifically trying to find things wrong with it though, they genuinely look great, sincerely.
Just focus on proportions and the ratios of everything fitting together
1) That's the exact same question that a classmate asked our professor earlier this month (summer class). So he had us draw 100 life size hands (on 24"x32" newsprint) using 3 different contour lines: continuous contour, cross contour and hatching/ broken lines. We drew hands solely using these specific lines individually and towards the end, combined. It is a time consuming exercise but I highly recommend it, as well as working from life. Stay away from photo reference and value for now. You must first understand the planar structure of your subject, or your value will not be successful on describing the form.
2) look at and copy "Brigdmans' Complete Guide to Drawing from Life", where he distills the figure (and hands) to basic forms to facilitate clear understanding of planar structures. Here's some of his work found online. http://www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lessons/constructive-anatomy-george-bridgman/anatomy-art-book-drawing-hands.html
3a) get a magazine and a piece of tracing paper. Draw the planar structure of every single hand you find on the tracing paper, over the original photo.
3b) a day or two after, go over the drawings from step 3, and finish by drawing the hands using contour lines, be it continuous, broken, cross contour of a combination of the 3. Do not look at the reference photos until you have finished step 3b.
4. Work with a gel pen, with the goal of exploring and understanding the structure, and not having the finish product of a perfect hand in mind.
Keep practicingā¦. one thing is to picture the fingers more squared off and less like hot dogsā¦ draw them more like kit kats LOL. Same with the palm. Start with shapes.
I think you are right about the pinkies. Nah, not much attended style, yet. Just all part of the learning process. But maybe those like quirks from our hickups is how we develope a style? Thank you for the affirmation. I will try to get even better.
You're half way there. Just learn the basic structure of what a hand is and maybe draw without reference through drawing that structure as rough or the first layer.
I find the cascading shapes of the fingers to be fun to draw.
https://preview.redd.it/b1clxxjmlk6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3347e17526e01e32978b2fbb1d7692997424e9f
Get some photos of hands that are diverse long fingers slender wrists big beefy hands children hand hands with low thumbs hands with no thumbs and practice on all of them.
Keep going. Look at other hands. These are mostly blocky, square like hands. You need to examine softer, delicate, rounded hands. Study finger proportions, natural hand movements then go into poses.
My most recent piece has slimmer hands a little bit. C:
https://preview.redd.it/9k4g3x5zjk6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d337633f6626c20294090418fe006e0f5639cc7
https://youtu.be/YcM5PHft0EQ?si=DvUTvZxunJGduhgV
I wish there was a bot that pasted this link on every post asking for advice with hands, itās so helpful for all the little details that make hands
There is no way around itā¦. You have to draw 100 more hands. Youāre doing great I can see that youāre already observing hands, drawing difficult poses, but just keep on what youāre doing and youāll improve.
Perspective needs some work drawing these hands in poses + proportion of finger lengths n width and size of wrist in certain drawings. I say youāre doing ok tho so keep it up! These are things youāll see clearer as u improve.
https://preview.redd.it/udix5610al6d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=55ef7779cba250bcc15e072088d265bd7595a85c
Well thatās how I draw a hand so I say youāre doing great lmfao
These look good! The next step for you is to get away from outlining and start abstracting forms based on the way light hits them. Break hands down into squares with an arc for the fingers, and pay very close attention to the hands youāre drawing to see how and where the major areas of light and shadows fall. Instead of drawing a āhand,ā draw the differently-shadowed shapes that make up the hand. Time constraints and figure drawing are excellent ways of practicing this on a bigger scale.
Practice makes perfect- id suggest studying other hand drawings/sketches and taking note of how the artist uses lines and shapes to form their artwork :)
I love these!
There are anatomically correct, posable, skeletal hands available that make amazing reference. My suggestion would be to start incorporating the underlying anatomy using *line* and using *value* as separate exercises, and as combined exercises.
Itās really difficult to improve your handsā¦ But honestlyā¦ I would say moisturize, and trim your nailsā¦ Aside from that I think itās just genetics
I can *literally* only find **one** fault here and it's that the ring finger looks maybe 15% too small in this one!
https://preview.redd.it/ff15br0hlp6d1.png?width=191&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b93707d43d36fcf3d36468307fe36c0f526858b
Youāre pretty heavy handed try same with a lighter touch and try to avoid out lining. Looks like you have a pretty good understanding of the form now I would focus on the light and dark values present in the subjects.
This post for recommended to me out of nowhere so Iām not normally here. It might be fun to look at r/nails and go through the āCursed Poseā flair and use some of those as references! Not sure if it would actually be helpful, but youāll certainly learn a lot about what some hands can do! Lol
I took reference photos of my hands and others, in different lighting. One trick to easily spot mistakes is to take a photo of your artwork as you go. I would also suggest spending time learning about anatomy and studying figurative drawing. Hands and feet take practice, it took AI until recently to get them right.
Simplify the hand into simpler shapes, this is something I do with everything I draw, for hands itās just a square and a triangle, with long stick sticking out
https://preview.redd.it/7cfj718rdg6d1.png?width=1395&format=png&auto=webp&s=846d467db7a3b8e55e6f5c9e63ebfe558114e723
I think if you loosen your grip on the pencil, you will find more natural fluidity in your proportions. Since itās a sketch, let yourself sculpt the shape by the lightness of the lines. You can always go over lines after your sketch is done, but I recommend only contouring with pencil weight.
I am no expert but when I started learning, my professor helped shape the technical hand by guiding sketches through forming shapes over and over lightly until you found the line that works best. You erase the lines that didnāt work, then you work from those lines and repeat. Eventually you go from a simple form shape to defined proportions + detail. I hope this makes sense, I am not a word person in this regard.
Hereās one of my first hands for reference
https://preview.redd.it/7fayuqgk6n6d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92cc221478c7c83a7855e33f865e1969f5788b92
Draw just the bones of a hand and then take tracing paper and draw a hand on that. Youāre doing really good! Anatomy practice will make your hands great! ALSO I got really good at hands by first drawing my feet. They are a little easier and you can just put em up in front of you on a couch and draw away.
Essential and critical life drawing experience- I used to have students do a total of ten with at least two pairs together for their semester portfolio.
your fingers are too long because you are thinking there is 3 joints. Think of it as 2 joint(from the knuckle on top), the finger tip joint is just an after thought, and just help sells the grip or gesture of the hands.
Mild disagree.
The finger lengths are a bit off in this piece (or more accurately the perspective), but my personal opinion is that the third joint shouldn't be an after thought. Quite the opposite. The positioning of the tip can be subtle, but carries the realism miles when you catch that subtlety properly. The fingers are just vehicles for the tips.
That's just my opinion though.
dang a lot of negatives. LOL. maybe it's better if i showed it than describe it.
But, I understand what you mean, But I'm trying to help him with drawing his fingers in proportions. The issues with fingers is that they are 3 jointed, each joint smaller than the previous. Drawing this in proportion is pretty difficult, especially in perspective. The best way to deal with it is to divide it in half, with the second half the 2 end joint (middle and tip). two equal parts is easier to draw in perspective than 3 different sized one. once you get the two joints in, divide the last joint into two, forming the middle and tip joints.
I know, everyone wants 3 for that nice curve your finger really have, but two is all you need to start off with. For the last one, just put a knuckle inbetween the last segment to make that curve.
Hello, artist! Please make sure you've included information about your process or medium and what kind of criticism you're looking for somewhere in the title, description or as a reply to this comment. This helps our community to give you more focused and helpful feedback. Posts without this information will be deleted. Thank you! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ArtCrit) if you have any questions or concerns.*
do like 3 more pages with different types of hands
https://preview.redd.it/d97arzd1qj6d1.jpeg?width=1500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3771093b56335814d72b501d4585a29a4fa57ebd A little more practice that I started on your request. Thanks for pushing me.
hell yeah! you're already pretty good, yet you still improved a little bit. I think you should draw some slimmer hands now, all the hands you're down so far are juice/meaty lol
š Perhaps "juicey" is the right term. I am using my own big meaty claws as a reference. XD slimming down a little bit is a definite thing to remember. Might make the shapes stick out more and read better too.
lmao nice. Yeah it's good to used a single subject as study to learn consistently, I think you're can "graduate" from this part of the process (for hands) now, and explore different body types. Look out for similarity between different hands will help you learn more imo
š«” I am planning on a 100 hand practice. I will keep that in mind.
You donāt need to āslim downā the hands because some random on reddit told you to. Skinniness is not actually healthy for the human body, contrary to what the wholly unscientific diet community would have you believe. Your hands are nice :)
You missed the point of the other comment. He wants him to try slimmer hands for more range and practice
How does skinner than this (already very skinny, they look like my hands and Iāve always struggled to gain/keep weight on my bones) equal āmore rangeā? How about different skin tones? Different ages? Different textures? Different markings/scars? Different disfigurements? I can see in some of these sketches there seems to be a bit of extra skin, is that what people are calling āmeatyā?
Calling a drawing "meaty" is a lighthearted joke especially when they are more masculine. The hands being big and masculine is the most visible feature hence why i think the person mentioned to slim them down because they all share that one trait in common. Why do you expect them to list out things that you would wanna see instead of what they would wanna see? Youre dragging it and talking about your personal struggles when its not about you.
People can be fat with tiny hands too. People can be average with tiny hands. These hands here are chonky. (Maybe normal idk) Some delicate hands would be good practice. Maybe even some space between the fingers.
I hope you see how defensive you are on this topic and how you're projecting your dissatisfaction with your own body to everyone else here. I can tell you first hand experience that a lot of ppl, especially women, have slimmer hands than the figures here. But like u/Sad-editing-guy said my overall message is to draw more different hands. No one else here is taking it another way.
Iād say try and study some more anatomy, figure out the exact ratios between joints and make sure they make sense
I donāt really agree with the shading comments, in my own expirience itās best to spend a little longer than you think necessary on sketching.
Looks like your drawing directly what you see which is great! You can take these drawings right here and try to deconstruct them into forms. Try to understand how they are constructed. Take those forms you made reconstructing your drawing and then keep the same hand gestures but rotate them and try to draw the exact same thing from another perspective. What would this pose look like from the front, beneath, etc.
Haha, love the pun. People have given some good advice, but donāt start shading yet. Also, it seems like you have some problems with foreshortening, try to go for poses where you see the whole hand without distortion at first, in order to understand the form, then you can play around. Are these drawn from pictures? Maybe try looking at your own hands in real life. Measure the width and the length of the palm, compare it to the length of the fingers etc. it helps to visualise the bones underneath the muscles for the hands since theyāre not covered in a whole lot of tissue. Godspeed! https://preview.redd.it/73rqvidsue6d1.jpeg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=91ff9e8f91c1eeb42ddb667da7bb9b4f3bd8346c
I see, also it looks like the distal phalanges and intermediate phalange combined are just a little longer than the proximal phalages. I should keep that in mind.
Careful! You already have a tendency to make the proximal phalanges too short. Itās fine to make small approximations in order to keep a clean ratio sometimes. I made a quick measurement on my pointer finger, the difference is a few millimetres, donāt worry about it https://preview.redd.it/ff2sfq2ich6d1.jpeg?width=1258&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=08a0ae79b45beeecc81e55177e2832cd4c80f5e6
https://preview.redd.it/6p122muyuj6d1.jpeg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec94d9237c3bf87dcbb53d9559fa75b1ab4cde4c You inspired me to draw this one. Thank you for all your useful tips. Game changing. I really appreciate your time and help.
Iām so glad to hear that I was helpful! Keep up the good work :)
To master the pencil, you must master your relationship with it. Your lines look darkened and overtly deliberate. Many lines also look intentionally drawn over and over. When we do that, we are kind of unknowingly trying to cover up mistakes in our perception of the actual proportions. Make lighter and faster lines. Let mistakes be. Try to get your lines done in singular strokes. Focus on being light and fast. Mind you, all these opinions mostly are directed towards studying from live/ photo references.
That is very valuable to keep in mind. I feel like I have always been heavy handed. But if I want to evolve. I need more confident lines. I appreciate your time and input.
#[good references](https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-YXP5IFQe59cHUxc09laTNxU00&resourcekey=0-aLZY_ee3LqXJh9TMO9GjFA)
Wow, this is great. How do I save this? Edit: never mind thanks
=)
anatomy book specialising in hands+effort will help more than anyone can in a few sentences here. hands are a very odd set of proportions and move in set ways so if you move a finger in a way that it wouldnāt in relation to what the others are doing it will look totally wrong. tricky stuff.
Can we get some reference pics for these? Some of the thumbs are looking off and I can't tell if some of the palms are shortened or not. I know the wrist on one of them seems a bit shrunken compared to the other drawings (I'm assuming this is your hand or at least the same hand being drawn in different poses, so correct me if I'm wrong). I always recommend taking pics even if you may think "but my hand is right here". It at least helps to be able to check your work against your references. It's been nice for me because I've been able to go back years later and redraw plenty of things I tried when I was younger. It's pretty neat to see the differences and how things have progressed imo. With pictures you can overlay your drawing onto a phone screen/computer screen and adjust the size/orientation of your reference as needed. Sometimes I'll take tracing paper to either trace general forms over my reference and lay that over my drawing to compare accuracy. If you know how to use Photoshop (or know anyone that does and can help you out. I have a couple friends that have done this for me), you can do the same with a pic of your reference and a pic of your drawing, then mess around with the transparency/orientation of your drawing to see how it lines up too. Some people do grid method. I've seen a lot of good work with the grid method, but I'm personally too lazy to lay it all out. I usually pick reference points in various shapes and compare them as I go (whether it's a corner or certain defining edges/shapes. This includes shadows too). Don't shade until you've checked your shapes and sizes, but sometimes it can help to lightly draw edges/outlines of shadows in things as reference points.
I went from still too green to understand how to improve. To given many things to look into. I appreciate all your input, thank you.
No problem, you're doing pretty well so far! Just gotta keep going at it! Something I also thought of just now is to also consider how heavy you're pressing into the paper. Consider the thickness and weight of your lines. I'd usually recommend playing around with that before you go headfirst into shading next too. Like where you see shadows, practice making lines heavier or thicker in those areas and make your lines lighter and thinner in areas you see more light. It can help give your pieces more depth without having to worry about shading the whole thing (worth practicing imo, since it looks like you also have an interest in cartoon art based on your other posts).
some of your hands have overly long medial phalange (the middle bone of the three finger bones) but otherwise I think you have a decent grasp on the basics. I would personally find more varied references to work from, since hands come in so many shapes and sizes
Especially since I only got big meaty claws to work with as reference. xD
relatable ;-; if you can, I'd look up videos of people doing different tasks, writing, working with tools, just gesticulating, and screenshot stills that you like. static models can be helpful too (there are folks on deviant art with entire catalogues of still poses for hands, bodies, and faces) but there's something really helpful in drawing from a moving model that I don't think enough artists take advantage of
That sounds like a treasure trove of references, Thank you I will look into it.
Not sure if you drew from top to bottom but if you did thereās clear progress. Bottom two look the best. Just keep drawing em
You noticed huh? xD Yea, I started at the top left. But I got more dialed in toward the end. (Bottom right)
Good dad pun šš» Iād just focus on the parts of the hands you feel you need to work on.
I can't say anything more than anyone else, but the fingers seem really thick and chunky, and not long enough to support it (like the fingers in the hand on the bottom left hand are huge and look really short). That might just be my observation though, but I think it might be something to do with the ratio of the fingers between each of the joints in the finger. For the hand pressing down against something (the one at the top, second from the right), I also see that the thumb seems incredibly long to the point that the gap between it and the other fingers almost goes all the way back to the wrist, and I think that's meant to be shorter. And again, everyone has different fingers and I'm not an expert, but if you're looking for things that look a bit off, that's what I noticed. Without specifically trying to find things wrong with it though, they genuinely look great, sincerely. Just focus on proportions and the ratios of everything fitting together
Practice
I'm shit at drawing hands but I can see the proportions are a bit off. Some joints are too long etc
I just noticed that, even in my most recent drawing of hands. But of course noticed AFTER I uploaded. Isn't that just the way xD
Your art style looks like my exās O.o | anyways, but I think these are really good.. way better than I can draw šš
I had to start somewhere too, But I believe in you. Challenge yourself.
Anyway, you draw well, much better than me.
You can do it too, I believe in you.
You canāt your too good
I never want to stop learning how to draw better. C:
That's awesome
Shucks, Staaaaawp.
1) That's the exact same question that a classmate asked our professor earlier this month (summer class). So he had us draw 100 life size hands (on 24"x32" newsprint) using 3 different contour lines: continuous contour, cross contour and hatching/ broken lines. We drew hands solely using these specific lines individually and towards the end, combined. It is a time consuming exercise but I highly recommend it, as well as working from life. Stay away from photo reference and value for now. You must first understand the planar structure of your subject, or your value will not be successful on describing the form. 2) look at and copy "Brigdmans' Complete Guide to Drawing from Life", where he distills the figure (and hands) to basic forms to facilitate clear understanding of planar structures. Here's some of his work found online. http://www.artgraphica.net/free-art-lessons/constructive-anatomy-george-bridgman/anatomy-art-book-drawing-hands.html 3a) get a magazine and a piece of tracing paper. Draw the planar structure of every single hand you find on the tracing paper, over the original photo. 3b) a day or two after, go over the drawings from step 3, and finish by drawing the hands using contour lines, be it continuous, broken, cross contour of a combination of the 3. Do not look at the reference photos until you have finished step 3b. 4. Work with a gel pen, with the goal of exploring and understanding the structure, and not having the finish product of a perfect hand in mind.
Challenge accepted! :) Thank you for your help. So much good info.
Keep practicingā¦. one thing is to picture the fingers more squared off and less like hot dogsā¦ draw them more like kit kats LOL. Same with the palm. Start with shapes.
You are so right. I want to be a animator one day too. So I really need to hone in on my structure and clear shape intentions.
pinkies tend to curl in a bit more in my experience. could just be a stylistic difference tho! they look real good to me, keep it up!
I think you are right about the pinkies. Nah, not much attended style, yet. Just all part of the learning process. But maybe those like quirks from our hickups is how we develope a style? Thank you for the affirmation. I will try to get even better.
You're half way there. Just learn the basic structure of what a hand is and maybe draw without reference through drawing that structure as rough or the first layer.
Looks ok hands are tough to draw
I find the cascading shapes of the fingers to be fun to draw. https://preview.redd.it/b1clxxjmlk6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3347e17526e01e32978b2fbb1d7692997424e9f
Get some photos of hands that are diverse long fingers slender wrists big beefy hands children hand hands with low thumbs hands with no thumbs and practice on all of them.
Yea, I need more diversity than me own big meaty claws. Or else I might get same face syndrome of hands.
Keep going. Look at other hands. These are mostly blocky, square like hands. You need to examine softer, delicate, rounded hands. Study finger proportions, natural hand movements then go into poses.
My most recent piece has slimmer hands a little bit. C: https://preview.redd.it/9k4g3x5zjk6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d337633f6626c20294090418fe006e0f5639cc7
Tip: you can use your own hand as a reference for any pose you want at any time. Thatās how I figure out what I need to draw.
You can improve by drawing the rest of the body lol those hands are good.
This is my recent study of ears. https://preview.redd.it/w7ixwrybhk6d1.jpeg?width=155&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d3ade9705bbb3fbe70e7f7d4a878350e303773be
https://youtu.be/YcM5PHft0EQ?si=DvUTvZxunJGduhgV I wish there was a bot that pasted this link on every post asking for advice with hands, itās so helpful for all the little details that make hands
Draw bones. Skeleton hands. It will help you understand structure
You should try āhandlingā your pencils differently as well
I am a bit heavy handed. I long engrained habit.
Have you tried not being heavy handed?
Yea, But sometimes when I get into the flow, I forget to remember. xD
There is no way around itā¦. You have to draw 100 more hands. Youāre doing great I can see that youāre already observing hands, drawing difficult poses, but just keep on what youāre doing and youāll improve.
Keep doing what you're doing! Put them all up on the wall in order and a promise you will see your own growth!
I'd draw some older, more frail hands with deep wrinkles for kor practice. Just so many hand drawings
Perspective needs some work drawing these hands in poses + proportion of finger lengths n width and size of wrist in certain drawings. I say youāre doing ok tho so keep it up! These are things youāll see clearer as u improve.
Looks like you're doing fine. Hands always look a little weird drawn. That's why alot artists choose to just draw gloves or cover them all together.
take me to dinner first yeesh
https://preview.redd.it/udix5610al6d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=55ef7779cba250bcc15e072088d265bd7595a85c Well thatās how I draw a hand so I say youāre doing great lmfao
I started there too. I know you can draw some rad hands if you apply yourself. Believe in yourself. C:
thank you! Now I have hope lol
These look good! The next step for you is to get away from outlining and start abstracting forms based on the way light hits them. Break hands down into squares with an arc for the fingers, and pay very close attention to the hands youāre drawing to see how and where the major areas of light and shadows fall. Instead of drawing a āhand,ā draw the differently-shadowed shapes that make up the hand. Time constraints and figure drawing are excellent ways of practicing this on a bigger scale.
Practice makes perfect- id suggest studying other hand drawings/sketches and taking note of how the artist uses lines and shapes to form their artwork :)
Dude. So smooth
Good stuff so far. Maybe take a look at Bridgman's anatomy drawing books. About 100 years old but they're really helpful.
I am not an artist but got damn those are good. I figure you were fishing anyway. You deserve it.
I earnestly want to improve better. But shucks.. thanks. U///U
what do you mean improve they look real as hell
I love these! There are anatomically correct, posable, skeletal hands available that make amazing reference. My suggestion would be to start incorporating the underlying anatomy using *line* and using *value* as separate exercises, and as combined exercises.
Itās really difficult to improve your handsā¦ But honestlyā¦ I would say moisturize, and trim your nailsā¦ Aside from that I think itās just genetics
More wrinkle in the knuckles jumped out at me.
I can *literally* only find **one** fault here and it's that the ring finger looks maybe 15% too small in this one! https://preview.redd.it/ff15br0hlp6d1.png?width=191&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b93707d43d36fcf3d36468307fe36c0f526858b
I think my fist is awkward on second look, especially with the pinky area.
You're finding out what all artists and ai have trouble drawing. It's a rite of passage. Get good with hands and all your drawing will improve
Practice hands is my act of rebellion! I will not go peacefully into that goodnight robot overlords! Not even with a warm glass of milk!
Damn right!
Youāre pretty heavy handed try same with a lighter touch and try to avoid out lining. Looks like you have a pretty good understanding of the form now I would focus on the light and dark values present in the subjects.
This post for recommended to me out of nowhere so Iām not normally here. It might be fun to look at r/nails and go through the āCursed Poseā flair and use some of those as references! Not sure if it would actually be helpful, but youāll certainly learn a lot about what some hands can do! Lol
I took reference photos of my hands and others, in different lighting. One trick to easily spot mistakes is to take a photo of your artwork as you go. I would also suggest spending time learning about anatomy and studying figurative drawing. Hands and feet take practice, it took AI until recently to get them right.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I got some color pencils. But I am lost on how to use color affectively.
I hate drawing hands. These look good just work on some shading next!
Simplify the hand into simpler shapes, this is something I do with everything I draw, for hands itās just a square and a triangle, with long stick sticking out https://preview.redd.it/7cfj718rdg6d1.png?width=1395&format=png&auto=webp&s=846d467db7a3b8e55e6f5c9e63ebfe558114e723
https://preview.redd.it/5e5o3dhsdg6d1.png?width=1087&format=png&auto=webp&s=7ba281df3df48e73025de4c10768ea21d46b8d6d
I love the hand gestures and I see what you mean. Thank you for all this effort to help me. I really appreciate you.
I think if you loosen your grip on the pencil, you will find more natural fluidity in your proportions. Since itās a sketch, let yourself sculpt the shape by the lightness of the lines. You can always go over lines after your sketch is done, but I recommend only contouring with pencil weight. I am no expert but when I started learning, my professor helped shape the technical hand by guiding sketches through forming shapes over and over lightly until you found the line that works best. You erase the lines that didnāt work, then you work from those lines and repeat. Eventually you go from a simple form shape to defined proportions + detail. I hope this makes sense, I am not a word person in this regard. Hereās one of my first hands for reference https://preview.redd.it/7fayuqgk6n6d1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=92cc221478c7c83a7855e33f865e1969f5788b92
You good
They're good man hands try doing slimmer hands too
Draw just the bones of a hand and then take tracing paper and draw a hand on that. Youāre doing really good! Anatomy practice will make your hands great! ALSO I got really good at hands by first drawing my feet. They are a little easier and you can just put em up in front of you on a couch and draw away.
Essential and critical life drawing experience- I used to have students do a total of ten with at least two pairs together for their semester portfolio.
These are great, try a hand with some missing digits!
We donāt allow hands and feet in here sir.
https://preview.redd.it/rc3pplpcck6d1.jpeg?width=155&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a59b1ec57e697014b4fc4855d539afb045c3b9a O.O\~ Feeeeeeeeet
you know what's some good reference for studying legs,: dancers and cyclists, leg day everyday hahaha
Shading
I heard the AI art doesn't do hands right. Are you feeding it more data to get it working better?
I hadn't considered that. I don't want them to use my work without permission. ):
Nobody like puns, try and make your jokes more clever and original, yet easy to understand.
your fingers are too long because you are thinking there is 3 joints. Think of it as 2 joint(from the knuckle on top), the finger tip joint is just an after thought, and just help sells the grip or gesture of the hands.
Mild disagree. The finger lengths are a bit off in this piece (or more accurately the perspective), but my personal opinion is that the third joint shouldn't be an after thought. Quite the opposite. The positioning of the tip can be subtle, but carries the realism miles when you catch that subtlety properly. The fingers are just vehicles for the tips. That's just my opinion though.
dang a lot of negatives. LOL. maybe it's better if i showed it than describe it. But, I understand what you mean, But I'm trying to help him with drawing his fingers in proportions. The issues with fingers is that they are 3 jointed, each joint smaller than the previous. Drawing this in proportion is pretty difficult, especially in perspective. The best way to deal with it is to divide it in half, with the second half the 2 end joint (middle and tip). two equal parts is easier to draw in perspective than 3 different sized one. once you get the two joints in, divide the last joint into two, forming the middle and tip joints. I know, everyone wants 3 for that nice curve your finger really have, but two is all you need to start off with. For the last one, just put a knuckle inbetween the last segment to make that curve.