Study group - hands 1

The Love Life Drawing study group subject for March is drawing hands, the bane of many artists. In this first week, the real focus is on learning a simplified shape for the palm box, which is curved on the forward surface along the knuckles, peaking at the middle finger, and usually a little concave on the palm side. It’s still a complex shape, but not worse than a rib cage, and if you can master it, getting the rest of the hand in place becomes a lot easier.

I drew some of the boxes in the abstract, on the left, but was finding what I was doing hard to visualize, so I switched to drawing them on top of the reference photos. Kenzo also provided a little video of himself doing various hand positions, and I drew a few of those. I’ve included some sketchy fingers and thumbs for practice, but they sure aren’t good!