Learn To Draw

Drawing Hands Made Simple, Great Tips to Help You Master Hands

Artists consider drawing hands one of the hardest parts of the human form to draw. It takes a lot of practice to master drawing hands, however, it can be learned and less daunting than the task seems. Hands are a very expressive part of the body, much like the face, this is why it is sometimes so hard to draw. There is a formula to the process that makes it easier for artists to master drawing hands. Let's take a look at the process.

Start with blocking in the hand. Artists do this differently, do it the way you feel comfortable. A quick block-in might look a little like a fisted hand outline, with fingers outstretched.

When you are drawing the hand, you do not have to worry about all of the detail, this will come later. You always want to start with the overall shape and then work the finer details last. Break down the hand with simple shapes.

Then form the fingers. Notice the shape of them and the space between them. Make sure your proportions are correct. Once you have everything in the right position, then and only then, can you begin to refine the hand. Make sure the thumb is in the right position relative to the other fingers. You can use the thumb and pencil method to check these proportions.

Once your block-in or lay in is complete, you can finish with some shading and refining. Draw the main visible wrinkles, shadows, nails and then refine the lines.

Add some rough shading to bring the form out. Then refine with more subtle shading while observing the fine lines of the hands. It's good to know where your light source is coming from so you know where the shadows will fall on each finger.

There are some tips that you can consider when drawing hands that are helpful. First, draw your own hands. Set your hands in various poses and look for how the light falls on them. Next, know what's underneath the hand. Have a good understanding of the structure of the hand from an anatomical view point. This should give you a good understanding and help you with how the shading should be handled.

Start with easier poses and then work on more complex poses as you become more familiar.

Get critiques of your drawings. Feedback is very important when learning to draw anything. Get new perspective from others comments and don't be afraid to try them out.

Lastly, drawing takes a lot of practice. Don't get discouraged if your first few hands don't turn out. You'll get it, with persistence and practice, you'll be mastering hands in no time.

About The Author

Todd Harris is a master artist who is working as a concept art director for a multi-billion dollar company. He is trained in the Florence Academy Method and loves art. Learning2draw.com is a resource web site devoted to aspiring artists wishing to explode their figure drawings to new heights. For more information on how to draw people and faces visit http://www.learning2draw.com. You can also sign up for a free newsletter with hundreds of tips, tricks and techniques of the masters.

3 Rules For Sketching Outstanding Realistic Drawings

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Even expert artists occasionally struggle with crafting realistic three-dimensional pictures. Naturally they know the fundamental principles and produce naturalistic drawings intuitively. Only occasionally even the most experienced discover parts in their work that look distorted and unnatural.

For novices it is even more difficult, they have to exercise hard to climb a steep learning curve. It's long-familiar that good drawing skills are the result of hard exercising. Instead learning the three most crucial rules of third-dimensional drawing will make things easier for you. They will be a shortcut to better drawing skills and help even experienced artists to pinpoint elements that need a makeover.

So what makes a picture look naturalistic and three-dimensional? There are three rules that contribute to the realistic outlook of your pictures. Each of them has to be understood thoroughly. Collectively they guarantee outstanding outcomes:

* Composition
* Perspective
* Lighting and Darknesses

Composition

Does composition actually contribute to the three-dimensional appearing of your drawings? Naturally! The three-dimensional outlook of any picture is strongly influenced by the relation between the different objects within the picture. You can produce an image consisting of objects that all follow the laws of perspective and have perfect lighting and shadows. But a bad composition will spoil most of the three-dimensional appearance.

There is just one crucial composition rule: let your picture's objects intersect! Frequently I see beginners averting to let elements in their pictures intersect , because they're afraid to mess it up.

Indisputable - if your picture has lots of overlapping parts it is more difficult to depict. There are more shadows and also perspective and proportions of the objects must be much more exact.

That is demanding indeed. Tightly arranged elements in your picture will relentlessly uncover all weak points. On the other side when you manage to get the perspective, lighting and shades right, a closer composition will beef up the three-dimensional appearance.

So have bravery to arrange your picture's elements nearer together. Let them intersect and demonstrate how good you are able to draw them following the rules of three-dimensional pictures.

Perspective

Creating a drawing employing correct perspective is the moment where a bit bit maths comes into play. No need to worry - no complicated know-how, simply drawing some additional lines.

When producing a picture keeping the laws of perspective in mind you ensure that:

* your drawing's elements have the proper proportions and size
* your drawing's elements have the proper deformation according to the distance of the viewer
* your drawing's elements are correlating properly to each other

All this is accomplished by employing one simple rule:

" Objects and parts of them get smaller the further they are away."

This rule cannot be emphasized too much. Once you fail to apply it properly, your drawings will appear warped and awkwardly. So drawing some additional lines will help you to apply this rule properly.

Light and Shadow

The proper lighting and shading is the 3rd vital law for realistic appearing three-dimensional scenes. It's because of the lights in your drawings that shades emerge. And shades are necessary for a realistic appearing drawing - except you depict "gray rainy day" scenes only.

To craft realistic shades there are some rules you have to consider:

* you must recognize where exactly the illumination originates from
* this enables you to find the right size of the shadow
* the right bearing and direction for the shadow
* and the proper silhouette of the shadow

Unluckily realistic dark shades aren't that comfortable to create. But there are some helpful tricks. Just in this moment I'm writing on a tutorial revealing these methods stepwise. It will follow here soon.

About The Author

This is just a draft of my conceptions on how to learn drawing.

You find updates, a comment area and perspective drawing tutorials on my Website.

http://drawingsecrets.com