A lot of illustrators suffer from the “grass is always greener” syndrome. We spend more time appreciating the work of others, and less time appreciating our own work. This is a common issue among most creatives. Why even bother writing a story or painting a picture when I can think of dozens of people who would do it better? My answer to that is simple, and something I only recently (and finally) accepted with my own work: just like our handwriting, no one can create exactly like we can. Our inherent individuality—coupled with years of training and growth—is what buoys our creative lives.
OK HANDS ARE ALSO THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. I only recently sorta learned how to draw them (still not great and I still make a ton of mistakes) but there are a few things I’ve learned over the years.
TIP 1: I stare at my own hand a lot to get a sense of how it moves, how it looks, etc. I suggest you do this. Contort your hand, move your fingers, pay attention to the contours and silhouettes your hand makes. One of the important things I learned is that if you don’t have a sense of how a hand should look, it’ll be hard for you. People make it easy with the tutorials they make like oh “draw a square palm, then do the skeletal fingers, then fill it in and voila!” Nope, that’s not enough, because I’ve followed those exact tutorials and was like um…this still looks nothing like a hand what the hell??? Soooo definitely, get a sense of how a hand works and moves first!
TIP 2: Fingers have VOLUME. This was a HUGE breakthrough for me when I discovered this. Yeah, I know it sounds obvious but it’s a surprisingly often overlooked fact. They’re not pointy sticks, they are fleshy tubes? Well anyway, I use the FINGERNAILS to represent volume. When I draw a finger, I first draw the top ridge (indicating three segments), the fingernail, THEN the rest of the finger. Idk, it’s a weird thing I came up with.
TIP 3: Know the relative relationship the fingers have with each other and how they move together. This is similar to TIP 1, but I felt it needed to be on it’s own as well. Not knowing how a finger curls, how it moves in relation to the others, will make for awkward hands (unless that’s the aesthetic you’re looking for)
My biggest struggle is making the size of the hand proportional haha (I always make fun of yaoi hands but it’s a genuine struggle??? Like I understand where the artists are coming from, it is so difficult NOT to make the hands too big or too small.) Thank god for the transform tool lmaoooo
I’ll also do some notes on perspective and dynamic posing later. (We’ll see how dynamic posing goes considering I’m not too great at it myself so… yeahhhh.)
My brothers dogs, Dave and Dixie. Sometimes I gotta babysit them and their opposite needs can be hard to grant as one always wants pets and the other constant play.
