Life Drawing: Drawing Hands and Feet with Hester Berry
Hands and Feet
It can be tricky to tackle hands and feet – many people leave them out all together during short poses, choosing neatly severed stumps over vaguely sausagey arrangements. Indeed they are complex parts of the anatomy – hands offer so many variables, with five independent and sometimes foreshortened fingers; feet are large and relatively featureless, it’s difficult to find any landmarks and they often only begin to make sense with successful use of tone.
Because of this, it is impossible to learn to draw ‘a hand’ or ‘a foot’, you must objectively draw the object that you see in front of you, relying only on your powers of observation. But in order to aid that observation, I can give you a secret shortcut – think ‘mittens’ and ‘socks’!
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AccessArt is a UK Charity and we believe everyone has the right to be creative. AccessArt provides inspiration to help us all reach our creative potential.
Sheila C
January 7, 2016 @ 12:03 pm
Thank you Hester for yet another smashing contribution to AccessArt – Fantastic tips and stunningly illustrated. Brilliant.
Hester B
January 7, 2016 @ 4:57 pm
Thanks Sheila! Hope it’s useful.
Vanessa Marr
February 3, 2016 @ 9:16 am
I tried this technique with my adult ‘intro to drawing’ class. What a success! Thank you. Breaking it down and ‘thinking mittens’ really works. Brilliant.
Hester B
February 3, 2016 @ 6:17 pm
Great Vanessa! I’m pleased it makes sense! I realised that it’s the way I think when I’m drawing so I tried it out on some students and I found it made a difference to them too.