hands

Well, well, well wretchedlead, I really must say that you're really knowing where you're going with your hand quick sketches. Very good job on your direction, movement and line economy.

Well, if I can and will be able to suggest a polish, it could and should be that some of the hand animations are a teensier bit too stiffest. Would you please be able to do 30 minutes of 29 second quick hand sketches with your dominant hand? (all flipped horizontally) And while you're at it, would you kindly be able to a practice design sheet of different hands from life and photos, timing yourself with a timer app on your smartphone as you go?? The reason is, as long as you work quickly and most humorously, you'd be able to help you squash and stretch the plasticity of those quick drawings. For more details and information, be sure to pick up a copy a Kindle of The Nancy Beiman book.

Good luck, hope this helps, and keep up the good work.

Hand drawings are hard. I got a bit better at it after doing hand sketches, trying to focus on extremely simply forms: Palm a flat box, thumb muscle as an egg shape, each finger three separate pieces of tube. I ignored all the joints and the sinews, and just focused on the geometric forms and the foreshortening until I got somehow confident with the overall form.

Another extremely useful practice is to try to reduce the lines used as much as possible, so, for example, whenever possible NOT to distinguish individual fingers and to test out different shortcuts. That's especially useful to prepare for doing quick sketches of poses, as fiddling around with all those fingers steals inordinate amounts of time and focus, and then it often still ruins the pose.