(I teach k-12 art and sometimes college level drawing/animation/illustration)

When I was younger I was ver self conscious about drawing hands. I still had some of this self consciousness even when I got to art school. When I was in high school I tried to copy and study from anatomy books. I can study something over and over again but I won’t always be able to recall what I studied. I need visual ques to remind me.

At the beginning of the school year I started with variations on contours drawing. This year I used cave painting as an entry for this. Quickly we got into doing studies of our own hands or other peoples hands. I went back over the working parts of the hands. E.g. carpals, metacarpals and phalanges. The muscles, fat pads and tendons.

During that time going over various forms that are in play like cylinders or rectangular cube, which I likened to a thick piece of bread.

After we put that together or now what variations can you try out? Do you want to make hands look “realistic” and take the time to render everything out or would you just throw down sausage fingers to get an idea across like a cartoonist?

Or even from there do you abstract and exaggerate?

by the time I had gotten to September from August I had a handful of animation tests and wanted to put them together in a short animation. I guess this is the limit of how many pictures I can put up on a blog post. I will continue this is a part 2. The big picture here is to get over fears or deficits by studying. Studying drawing can be just drawing a lot…I know this drives some people crazy being told to just draw more…but if part of what we are trying to over come is a fear of starting…making mistakes and still feeling like you are getting somewhere. Getting some pencil mileage can be valuable.