Hands Over

At long last, I have finished my hand-drawing goal:

01. Fill a sketchbook with artwork/studies of only one subject

I chose 'hands' as my subject because I have always struggled to draw them, and after struggling some more back in 2015 when I started on this goal, I gave up, only dipping into it every so often to scribble down a hand sketched from a reference on google images.

Then at some point towards the end of last year/beginning of this year, I began making more of an effort again. For a while I drew a lot from the timed exercises on Line of Action (which you can see in previous posts) which really kickstarted my drawing again!

But I soon began drawing from my own references, too (as in this post) and filled my camera roll up with hand photos I'd snapped on my phone!

I attempted drawing without a reference, but that turned into drawing with a reference (of my own hand) because it started going badly very quickly!

In fact, some days my attempts still go pretty badly!

As for whether I've improved, here are the first and last sketches from the book:

First Hand

Last Hand

I have definitely improved!

After starting this goal so long ago, it's a relief to finally get it finished! In the process of drawing, I've found that pastel pencils make really light work of shading (but are a pain in the butt when they break). I've also found that my favourite pencil to draw with is a 6B watersoluble graphite pencil, like these ones by Derwent (and no, they aren't paying me to say that). It's easy to achieve a variation of shades, and being able to shade larger areas with the side of the pencil gives me more control than if I was using a traditional pencil. So I'm kind of glad I've got two of them!

Over the course of this goal, I have drawn over 150 hands! I haven't posted all of them online. Some are just little doodles from trying to draw cartoonish hands, where I didn't really put any effort into drawing, so I didn't post them. But everything else is are here on this blog.

You can see all the sketches I posted by going to my Goal 01 Tag.