Part 2: Hands

One wailing cry or categorical statement meets my ears time and time again from students: “I can’t do hands”. Many of us get so frustrated by what we consider to be our own inadequacy at drawing hands that we resort to the vaguest mitten-like suggestions in our pictures – or we specifically choose a head-and-shoulders composition to avoid them altogether. I know how it feels, I’ve been there.

Hands really are far more complex than we give them credit for. We are so familiar with hands, especially our own, that we forget how miraculously multifunctional they are. Imagine you were drawing in a life room and there were two models who both had four legs and one arm each. Not only that, but they kept running up to each other and entangling their many legs or falling back with their feet in the air. Sounds impossible, doesn’t