It’s a sign of intelligence to use your hands gesturally in public speaking.
Hands and gestures are a huge component of speaking in a compelling way. Think about the last public speaker you saw who kept their hands in their pockets, and you’ll probably be thinking about an awkward, weird speech.
We laugh when we hear stories about hand models, yet, people really do care, a lot, about hands!
Drawing believable hands is as important as drawing a believable face, as important as a voice - without believable hands, the whole thing isn’t believable.
Here are some ideas and toolsets that I hope you will find useful for drawings hands that are expressive, and drawing feet that are believable.
And what about, gulp, feet?
Sometimes I have nightmares where I am sent to a gulag and am forced to draw feet all day.
Every time I look at a foot - my foot, your foot, the foot of the most beautiful person on earth, the foot of the ugliest person on earth - I think to myself “How did this thing ever evolve?”
Feet are full of tiny little complex bones and really they make no sense at all. To learn to draw them I have to power forward at them, overcome my fear of feet, and draw them in isolation:
So where do you find hands and feet to draw? How do you get good at drawing them? I think it’s a matter of repetition for me, and, finding good sources for models. If you asked me to draw a hand right now I could draw one, but I’d prefer to actually look at a hand and draw one instead of just mentally fabricating one.
1. Model hands and feet yourself.
Aside from always having your non-dominant hand as something that can be drawn, or even your drawing hand. I draw my hands all the time and take photos of my hands to draw from. This works most of the time, except when I need to draw VERY MANLY hands, or small hands, or Hulk fists or basically any hand that doesn’t look like my hands.
The same goes for feet - though it is weird to take pictures of your feet all day, stranger things have been done in the name of art.
2. Ask a friend to model.
The problem with having your hands and your feet are… you only ever have one type. You have masculine hands, feminine hands, in-the-middle hands, hobbit hands, or just plain hands. Eventually you will need a friend if you ever want to draw a different kind of hand. Oddly, modeling art from ourselves or from one model too often can result in art that is pinned too closely into one style (See: Same-Face Syndrome.) You probably don’t want all of your characters to have the same hands, unless you’re drawing a comic about clones, or something.
3. Read comic books, watch movies, play games
There are 8 billion of us out there and about 16 billion hands, and there are even more on the internet and in pop culture like comics, games, and movies.
Movies are good for capturing and practicing drawing hand poses. Just hit the play button a movie you’ve seen dozens of times and pause it throughout, and draw the hands you see. This works well for body poses, feet, guns, anything that challenges you. It’s good to not do it too much though with the same movie, or your audience will slowly and surely start to recognize that most of your art looks a lot like poses from Die Hard.
Games are a treasure trove for finding poses, because most games are about moving a person through a world. Take Breath of the Wild for instance - Link’s feet are angled here in a way that is useful for modeling a scene, because, well, he is in a scene. He is at a sparkly fairy fountain, and I find myself fully believing in the reality of the fountain due to how firmly his feet are planted on the fountain shore. I believe in Link’s feet, I believe in the trees, the cliffside - I believe in the fountain.
I used the character screen of Breath of The Wild to make some drawings of Link’s boots, and from there, added some basic shapes in colors so that I could get a good idea of the structure of the boots. When it comes to drawing feet well, I’m a pauper, like the homeless guy on the side of the road with a cardboard sign that says Anything Helps. In this case, the colorful shapes help.
4. The Handy app
It’s a funny name for an app but it has a hand model that you can use to pose. This app is great if you don’t have someone nearby to help you model, or if your significant other is tired of being your hand model, or if you’re playing a game to gather up hand poses, but Link never makes the hand pose you are looking for.
At first I thought there was no foot aspect to Handy, it being named Handy and all — it turns out that I mentally repressed the fact that there were hundreds of foot poses available. I haven’t personally tried drawing or tracing from these but they look promising.
Not recommended:
Pinterest: Be extremely careful with Pinterest tutorials. Some are good, some are extremely bad. Use your best judgement and go forth, but, with several, several pinches of salt!
Google Images: Though it is something that can be done on a rainy day, I’d recommend against Googling for hands, such as ‘Hand holding apple’ or ‘hand holding onto ledge’ because there will be so many disappointing stock photos that, if you’re anything like me, you’ll get mentally fatigued. Or, you’ll start laughing at the stock photos and start posting them on Twitter or texting them to your few remaining friends, or facepalming because you’ve plunged into some kind of previously unknown misery, where none of our ancestors were ever genetically prepared to have their retinas bombarded by scroll after scroll of emotionally dead hand poses.
So there you have it! Everything that I know about drawing hands and feet. I hope this blog helps you out with some tools and ideas on how to draw hands that look like hands!
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