Everybody's Heard...

I didn't even know what pencil I used. I think I'm coming to a close on the hands for now, and I think I've learnt a little more about what style I want to follow i.e. not this. I like the idea of exaggeration, like in the superhero comics, but with a realistic side to it too. I also really like the rough, sketchy styles that somehow still look great. Having always been so tidy with my drawing, it's not a style I have ever gone into, but I really want to be able to master.

Not more than I want to present a clean, clinical drawing, apparently.

'And it's nice to see you too...'

It's a nice drawing and I really like the cleanliness of it all, but it's not something you would hang on your wall, is it? It's not art - yet. I don't want to end up drawing stuff that looks like something a doctor would point at, as great as that sounds.

For the more sensitive among 'all my readers' I must apologise for step 3 on the diagram above. In my experience of drawing well over five hands, I have found that starting with the middle finger gives a good reference as to where the others sit. My third finger is slightly longer than my index and I don't know if that's common. Maybe that's why I always get mittons instead of gloves for Christmas.

My Apologies, Granny

After the success of my recent hand drawings and in a sudden flash of... let's not say ego, but confidence, I thought, 'I could probably draw that apple right there if I wanted to'. I placed the rather oddly shaped apple on a stool in front of me, picked up a tatty pad and dulled pencil and began to draw.

Just... Ugh.

My hand moved roughly over the paper, describing the loose curves of the quite ugly fruit. As the grey amorphous blob began to take shape it dawned on me just how much I didn't want to draw that apple, and I think that's the problem sometimes. This leads me to my 'tip' of the day. 

If you really don't want to draw something and can't give your full attention, then you will find it really difficult to produce a good drawing.

I think a lot of drawing happens when you're just in the moment. Like writing comedy, taking photographs or having a really good conversation, you're not thinking, you're just there and it flows and it feels great, but when your mind is somewhere else, this happens. It's a really strange balance to get but when it's there, it's the best thing ever.

I just didn't get any pleasure out of starting that apple, but I drew a lot from stopping, and that's just not something you can hang on your wall.

Next up: something you might actually find useful.

Curved. But Flat.

This is a nice tip I found for the palm (I know I'm still on hands). This technique does depend on the idea of manipulating an object in your mind as I mentioned a couple of posts ago with the dice. You can even see a little bit of the exercise in the bottom left of this using a cup as my subject.

The idea of this is that the palm is essentially a curved, flattened cube, and I thought it would be a nice exercise to practice that shape a few times to get a feel for it.

I then tried to work that into the shape of the hand, the best example being in the bottom right of the image below. Just to the right of that there is a similar technique to the one in my last post, drawing out the skeleton and knuckles, but including the fingertips as cylinders. Of course, that depends on if you can already picture the length of the fingers and where the knuckles will be on a foreshortened hand. I haven't even got to that yet!

Boned

Here's a technique I tried for getting the basic hand shape down. The idea is that the 'skeleton' of the hand is drawn in first, with positions for the knuckles and joints, before being fleshed out. It does work, but I think you do need a bit of experience of drawing to get this one to work, but then if you didn't have that, you wouldn't be drawing hands... would you?

Start with the square palm, then add the knuckles and thumb. Simply fill in the rest. Hmm...

I've gone over the basic shapes which I used to produce the drawing to make them a little clearer. I found that there was still an element of guess work with regards to the positioning of the knuckles and length of the fingers (which I'm still not convinced is correct; the top part of each finger looks a little short to me). It's worth remembering that each finger is essentially divided into three parts, and the middle finger is about the length of the palm. Which I didn't really pay attention to here. Sorry.

You can read more on this technique HERE but do come back, it will get easier, I promise!

It's getting a bit dicey...

I know I'm still drawing hands and, after faces, it's probably the next hardest thing to draw, but I'm hoping that starting on something complicated I will be able to master the other things much more easily. If you're new to drawing yourself, it might be worth starting on something a little simpler, such as a jug or cup.

Try this: In your mind, picture a simple mug, plain white, with a large handle. Got that? Now see if you can rotate that object around in your mind. I have always been able to do that and I understand a lot of people struggle. I don't know if it's down to observation, memory or curiosity. Probably all three. The idea that you can picture something from any angle and then reproduce it on paper is quite a high level goal, but it is something that can be learned.

I think it's down to knowing your subject really well. Try picturing a dice. You know the sides add up to seven, so picture a big white spot on a bright red dice. You know the six is on the other side, so can you slowly rotate that dice, past the three and around to the six?

Cubes aren't that difficult to draw, and they can really help with perspective and shading. If you can't do the exercise, then find a dice and physically do it.

First Hand Knowledge

This was one of those moments where you say to yourself, 'I think I'll draw a hand', and you look down, start moving the pencil and everything just works.

I was so spontaneous with this one that I put last month's date on it.

Drawing like this scares me a little though. Producing something like this in such a short time always makes me a little nervous to pick up the pencil and do another. What if it doesn't happen again? What if that's it?

This hand was a drawing of what was there, nothing clever, just careful observation and a couple of rough circles and lines to denote the shape (you can see one at the base of the thumb). But I needed to know what the techniques were, how a hand can be constructed and always look correct from any angle, without doing any more silly hand signs in a mirror.

Sprightly Jack

This is it. My first original drawing in years. I'm not counting doodles and silly little sketches, which is incidentally, what this drawing began as; a little coin-sized sketch which had a great expression. I spent a bit of time shaping it into this into a larger and more complete drawing, before scanning it in and polishing it all up digitally.

Bwah, ha, ha, haaaa...

You probably won't learn much about drawing from this first post, but it is a significant image for me, which is why it's here.

You can see the finished Sprightly Jack HERE, but remember to come back!