30 min class on hands

hi I would love pointers and advice, i don't draw hands too often annymore and needs to figure them out. last drawing other drawing all the small sketches

Hi there, thanks for sharing these! Your first two sketches are pretty good, you clearly understand the proportions and general anatomy of the hand. There are a couple of small details that are slightly off. In the sketch of the hands holding the reigns, the visible thumb is a bit too short. When the fingers are fully extended, the tip of the should extend to the bottom of the first knuckle of the index finger. If the fingers are flexed inward to grip something, then the thumb should definitely extend past that first knuckle. You can try mimicing this pose with your own hands to see what I mean.

The proportions in the second sketch with the model covering her face look better. My main critique here is that the hand and fingers appear to be positioned at slightly different angles. The right hand, for example, is positioned perfectly straight up and down. However, the fingers appear to be slanted at the "base", as if the model slightly repositioned her hands in between when you drew her hand and her fingers. The main giveaway is the length of the ring finger compared to the index finger. They should be about the same length, but the ring finger is visibly shorter.

The final area for improvement would be improving your overall gesture. Both drawings are pretty stiff, and the amount of line work suggests you're working and re-working these to get them right. I can tell from your "small sketches" that you're struggling to draw quick, gestural sketches of the hand and, guess what, that's a point of weakness for me too! George Bridgman has a pretty good technique in his book "Constructive Anatomy" that may help you, you can view it on Google Books for free - check page 36.

One final tip that will help your reviewers: please put a name or number on your drawing for identification purposes, then use that same name/number when you provide the link. That will make it easier for us to call out which drawing you're talking about. :)

Hello Majavhv, hands are rather a complicated topic, and improving in drawing them really depends on what your goal is:

If you want to draw them only from a reference, then just practice and maybe do some gestural drawings of hands, also knowing the anatomy of them wouldn't hurt tbh.

However, if you want to be able to draw expressive hands from imagination the road is much longer, during which you'll need to study many aspects like : anatomy, gesture, construction and shading.

My main advise is to search on youtube for more in depth information.

Have a great day/evening.

Hi thank you su much for the very helpfull point. I Can totally see your points. I think I will try exercises where I fokus on measuring and comparing lengths of the fingers and other hand proportions. I will definitely check out the book recommendation. Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out, it means a lot. :)

Thank you. I didn't think much of shading before I will keep it in mind. :) have a great day/evening too

Nicest job on all your hands, Majavhv, very well observed and felt.

I absolutely adore all of your quick sketches, especially your 30 and 60 second drawings, but if I was to critique them, it would be that a few of these hand poses are a bit too on the rigid side. Why don't you please loosen up the flow and organicness of those sketches, by going thru 145 minutes of 30 second warm-up hands, all on 18x24 newsprint or related pad, all for 5 days? (145 x 60/30/5, 8700/30/5, 290/5=58 scribble hands a day)

The reason is, as mentioned above, you'd be able to draw loosest, lightest. largest. longest, and liveliest lines of action and rhythm for your hands and feet.

Here is the video below.

And here's another, for inspiration:

Cheerio, and I hope you've found these generally useful and practical and detailed.