hiya all :wavey:
does anyone know where to find any free tutorials on how to structure hands and feet?
I’m going through the Loomis books at the moment (I’m on ‘fun with a pencil’ at the moment) but even though I can draw the structure of Heads and bodies okay I always seem to struggle when it comes to incorporating the hands and feet into the pose.
One thing that really skips you through a lot of trial and error, is this. Remember how the bones move in relation to eachother. That’s why they’re difficult, they seem rocksolid but they are affected by tons of system not even located in the hand. It’ll never be easy, probably. But f you have your anatomy right and understand it too, the workings of the hand you’ll be able to draw them quite a lot faster.
Search for books called :
“Drawing Dynamic Hands” & “Dynamic Figure Drawing”
both by Burne Hogarth
It might be helpful. Also try to search over the net for it because it might be for free. I honestly don’t know if they’re downloadable for free because I got my pdf copies from a friend of mine who got them from another friend etc. etc.
thanks!
what I meant though was along the lines of is there anything you can start with as in basic form to build on? such as with the head you start with the sphere then hack off the sides etc.?
I was looking at this in the Loomis book but found it difficult to understand, it wasn’t as clear as the rest of the book IMO.
heheh, i would recomend the following :
if youve done any life drawing, its simply a matter of treating the feet and hands as entire bodies - applying the principles and strategies used in drawing a full body onto that of a hand. isolate the forms - from an open hand you would usually find wedge-like shapes for the palm and the fingers until it becomes clenched, and it takes a ball shape. hands are always a pain though.
Um, triangles and circles? A simplistic answer would be an obtuse triangle from a side view, the greatest angle being on top and the long side being on bottom. Then add toes. If looking from a front view it’s an acute triangle and 5 circles along the bottom side.
Hands are too difficult to simplify like that. They’re the most poseable part of the human body so there’s no standard. Sometimes they look like 
while other times like :buttrock: .
wtf? talk about thread hijacking…
anyway, to answer the original question, i’d take a look at books by bridgman. he has a way of simplifying forms that make things easy to learn. also just draw your own hands and feet as much as possible. it’s funny that we struggle so much with hands and feet, when we have free access to life models 24 hours a day.
Something that helped me a great deal is studying sketches of others. Particularly, Adam Hughes. It’s interesting and helpful to see how some artists breakdown and rough out their work. Check out this link for loads of his work (link).
Good luck
The best way to start drawing hands and feet is to draw it by nature with chalk/pencil (i prefer chalk for starters 'cos it makes you concentrate more on the structure then on details). You may start by laying your left hand (or right if you are lefty) on solid surface and the draw. You could do the same with your feet. If you need to change an angle, you can do that with mirrors. Believe me, my first drawings of hands i made like this, and i learned a lot from it. You can also find someone to pose for you, the best models are old people- on them you have everything- you can see bone structure, muscles and skin has much les water so it’s wrinkled and thinner. If i was you, i wouldn’t even try to learn from books- that way you can improve your cnowledge of anatomy, but you can’t learn to draw good. Exeptions are old masters - and in my humble opinion, the best anatomy studies were made by Leonardo and Michaelangelo. The others i don’t prefer, 'cos they all learned from them.
Thanks for all the feedback, especially the link rogfa!
sorry for how long the reply’s taken, been offline for around two weeks due to changing internet providers.
btw, was wondering how many of you rely on structure when life drawing or does this method restrict your creativity (and your vision)?
a huge problem that I even have is to treat every part of the body as important as the next, even the hair and head are as important as the rest of the body. and if you drawing from a model, leave those two parts for last since its impossible for a model to stand still 100 percent of the time.
Hey guys, as promised have posted some of my work.
here’s the link: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=2796501#post2796501
enjoy!
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