What Hands Do

Preston Blair shows how it's done. (In his Disney-animated cartoon sort of way, of course.) Scan taken from James Gurney's awesome wonderful art blog, Gurney Journey; post: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2012/03/drawing-cartoon-hands.html

   It's interesting to note what people do with their hands. We humans are bipedal, giving up the quadrupedal gait for one in which we can use our front appendages for grasping and whatnot. What do we do with our hands when we're not grasping is fascinating. Cupping, folding our arms, letting them hang down by the side. It's good practice to (discretely?) sketch the hands of those around you, on the bus or subway or at church or work or-- you get the idea. I say discretely so that people don't notice you're sketching them and pose- that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, which is capturing the hand in its natural environment.

SO MANY HANDS. And that's not nearly all of the sketches I did. Still, this many hands wouldn't take that long-- see a pose, sketch it, see a pose, sketch it. It gives you something to do, and you get excellent practice time in.

   I've been working on this technique for a while now; it's the technique I told you about all the way back in May, here, (back when Adam was still among us!) Sorry. Sometimes that can still hit, like... well, not like a brick per se, but, still, it's weird.

   You can see the technique there, how I start out with a more flattened-bell-shaped palm then get a feel for the positioning of the digits. Getting the position of fingers and wrist is the most important part, along with the relative location of the other hand if they're interacting at all.

   Well, I guess I'm off of animation techniques for a while. Tomorrow, a follow-up of something else from around that time period. Don't miss out. (And if you do, you can just go back and read in the archives. Whatever, mmm.)