Hand Drawings Critique Part 3
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Because your post is so timely I'm gonna jump in and do a demo/plug for the upcoming SVS class Dynamic Expressions: Drawing Heads and Hands. You've got a solid foundation here. I cannot recommend your exercise of 100 hands enough. This is a great way to get good at hands! The thing that I would encourage you to do is really nail down the underlying geometry in hands. Try to emphasize lines of action (see finger tips in stage 2). I'd also recommend that you draw hands in contrasty lighting. Form shadows are going to do wonders for your understanding of the geometry that make up hands and fingers. I can tell that you are a detail oriented artist (from the attention paid to shading and wrinkles) but hold off on that until you've really nailed the base drawing. And when drawing hands watch out for finger positions that look odd - even if that's EXACTLY how the hand was posed. I'm constantly repositioning my hand reference so that the final drawing "looks" right.
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amazing sketches!
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@davidhohn It is very interesting what you have said about the finger positions looking odd,I find this all the time even though the reference showed this position ,sometimes the pose just does not look possible and awkward.
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@heather-boyd Thanks for all the things you've pointed out! It's really helpful!
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@nyrryl-cadiz Thank you very much!
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@davidhohn I'm honored that an SVS instructor would give me feedback. I'll be sure to focus more on the underlying geometry and hand positioning, instead of the details in my following hand drawings. I usually have trouble doing form shadows, however. Do you have any advice on that? Thank you so much for the critique and redraw!
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@orion-tian Anybody who takes the time to study hands gets high marks from me! Such a worthwhile exercise! And I have to say, I think you've got the concept of form shadows working already. It's simply the way that light and shadow wrap around forms to show the structure of the object. In the case of your hands it quite easy to see the use of form shadow in 22, 25 and 26. The trick is to light your reference in a way that the form shadows emphasize the structure of the hand rather than the wrinkles and details. At the moment the play of light and shadow seem to be emphasizing detail.
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@dottyp Yup. That's one of the big downsides to photographic reference. When drawing from life and something looks "weird" you just move your head a bit and discover "Oh, THAT'S what happening to that foot/hand/foreshortended elbow/whatever" and correct the drawing right then. With photos, unless you have that deep experience of life drawing to pull from you are kind of stuck with the "accurate" (I mean, a photo doesn't lie right?) but "weird" reference.
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@davidhohn Thanks a bunch for all the great advice, I'll be sure to work at them!
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@davidhohn Great advice but I can only get males to pose for me so my ladies will look like wrestlers
