Hands

Expressive, complex and hard to draw.  Hands have been a favorite of mine since art school.  One rarely gets a good expressive hand pose with the live model.  When you do you usually have just one chance to catch it. Coming back from a break in a long pose, the hands are never the same. This session the model was holding her glasses. She was breaking every 20 minutes. Each time she resumed the pose her hand was slightly different. As luck would have it, I was struggling with the scale of the hand so I just kept redrawing it. I ended up with a lively sort of composite hand.

Figure Study, oil pastel, 11" X 9", 2013

For longer more detailed hand studies you always have a free live model.  Being left handed I've done countless drawings and a few paintings of my right hand. Here are some ball point pen studies taken from a sketch book done sometime in the 1980's.

Hand Studies

And a longer oil study from 2001.

Hand Study, oil on linen, 9" X 11", 2001

Using one's own hand as a model has obvious limitations.  Unless you are working in a mirror you always have a looking away view.  It is still a good practice tool.  Much of the fear of drawing hands can be alleviated by practice. First break the fingers into planes then individual fingers.