Hands Forever

Treat yourself to an afternoon of drawing hands!
Hands. Are you kidding?
The hand is arguably the most difficult thing to draw. It takes some practice. But, look, there’s no excuse, it’s always there. Just draw it.
Actually drawing your left hand (or your right hand if you’re a lefty) is not that easy, since it’s hard to hold it steady and in a comfortable position. Therefore, I recommend that you draw from photos of hands, which are ubiquitous in our ad-crazed culture. Your desk is full of junk mail showing hands holding a product or pointing to one. It’s not junk mail, it’s a treat.
Barbara Heaton in my drawing class worked from a photo of two hands. She drew with a graphite stick on white textured paper that she had previously rubbed gray with graphite powder. The white highlights were created by erasing the graphite down to the original white paper, about 12”x14”. Is this not breathtaking?
This is classical drawing. I hope it never gets boring.
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
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Developing the Drawing: One-Two

The assignment here was to do two drawings from the same subject.  In the first drawing you work to get everything right; you study the shapes, the anatomy.  After you’ve worked up a good sweat over all these details, you exhale and tape a fresh piece of paper on your drawing board.  Now you do the second drawing.  You’ve worked out the hard parts and are thoroughly familiar with what makes this subject interesting to you.  Now you relax and draw for the sheer pleasure of drawing.  You let loose.  Your pencil skates across the paper.  Not that you’re glib or shallow.  On the contrary, you now draw the whole subject.  All at once.  You’re not bogged down by any details.  Been there, done that.  This second drawing will go fast, much faster than the first.  But, paradoxically, even though it does not work out details, your second drawing—the developed drawing–will suggest depth.  The viewer is pulled in and sees more than you spelled out.

This drawing by Maggy Shell is the second stage, the developed drawing, done from a magazine cover. We get this kind of image in the mail all the time and tend to toss it away as junk mail.  Take another look.  Your waste paper basket offers a wealth of inspiring subject matter.

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