Picking Myself Back Up

So, this week was much feared by almost everyone else but much anticipated by me. It was time to draw hands. I like drawing hands. I always have. Next to the face, they are the most expressive part of the body. Of course, with this comes the problem. They are almost the second most difficult part. This is because of the irregularity and complexity of the muscles and bones. They were a mystery to me up till now.

Hands have been my personal challenge for a while and many a lecture notebook of mine has them scribbled all down the margins. Drawing them for class was less complicated than I expected. Amy’s ‘mitten, then long axis, then major planes’ method is really effective. Before this I have always tried to make the volume clear and often failed miserably. My method was very hit and miss. I feel that most of the drawings I did in class were pretty good proportionally. One did come out a little funky and I’m at a loss as to why. It’s this one, any ideas guys?

The others could definitely use some improvement but I’m happy with them. It was nice to have a drawing experience that uplifted me. My drawing rut is long gone now.

The mannequins, on the other hand, seem to get worse and worse. The hand muscles are so small and fiddly. They lie over each other in ways that seem to make no sense. My mannequin is pretty averagely built but he has the forearms of a body builder. Or at least a body builder with deformities. I will have to get on to that.

Back to the drawings. In her comment on the midterm Amy said that I need to work on my line variation. And I’ve really been trying to focus on that. It’s hard because when I draw, I usually think about where things need to be first, and worry about the presentation of the work later, then go back and try to add line variations.  Maybe I should try to think about it as I go. I really worked on this with the skeleton hand. See.

All in all, a really good week for life drawing.