How to learn to draw a portrait:
Hands Automatic translate

Table of contents

Hands

The hands of the posing person usually reinforce the emotional mood of the portrait. So, a clenched fist may express anger or tension; two hands with widely spread fingers, which touch each other with their tips, speak of a thoughtful mood.

Hand study

Although you need to draw hands carefully, nevertheless they are not required to accurately convey all the features of the original. Review them to get an idea of ​​their proportions.Mark the shape and difference in the length of the fingers. Remember that all fingers, except the thumb, have three joints, and the thumb has two.

Hand image

It is best to practice on your own hands. First spread your fingers, laying them on a piece of paper, and circle with a pencil to reflect the different lengths of the fingers. Paint the resulting contour so that the silhouette conveys the overall shape of the hand. Then put your hand on the table and sketch it with your free hand, mark where the joints are (the widest parts of the fingers) and how each finger looks slightly in the other direction.

View and draw the back of your hand, and then your palm. In both cases, first outline the outline, and then add the details - lines and bulges. Draw your hand on the side, showing overlapping shapes and thickened joints. Use what you learn from these simple exercises as a hint when you draw your hands in different positions.

It does not bother to remember that the length of your hand is about the same as the distance on your face from the roots of the hair to the chin. The widest part of the hand, on the knuckles, is approximately equal to the length of the middle finger of the same hand.

Hands as a geometric shape.

Try to see common geometric shapes in your hand - in a clenched fist a sphere, in a open palm a small plate. If you add fingers one at a time to it, you are unlikely to achieve realism. Just as a tin figure simplifies the human body, fingers can be drawn in the form of tubes, each of which is slightly different in shape and bends differently in the joints.

Poses and movement

For the exercise, draw your hand in different positions and angles, sometimes holding something. Try to “freeze” the various stages of movement, for example by depicting a waving hand. Always remember that the thumb is held on the big joint close to the base of the hand. Watch how the forms overlap, how they cast shadows on each other;

Legs

Bare feet are endowed with much less flexibility than arms. And although they are usually hidden from view, the degree of realism of a drawing depicting people walking or running in shoes depends on the artist’s understanding of how the joints of the foot move.