The Forty Things We Share

Fingers and toes.  Hands and feet.  The bane of many artist's exsistence, and yet, they don't often give me trouble.  (except, if you check my last post, I seem to have *cough* given Metro Man two  right hands.  durrr)

I'm not great at drawing hands without references, and I've been known, on long boring plane rides to use my camera phone to photograph my own hands, so that I can draw them properly.  Sadly, I have ugly, chubby, short stumpy hands.  They work well, the've given me hours of pleasure ;) but they are SO not photogenic.  I also make my husband pose as a hand model for me too.  He has nice hands.  But it really doesn't matter, I can ugly up fingers, or lengthen or shorten, or even change the colour, if need be.

Yup, Dumbledore has hubby's hands!! :D
Hands add so much to any picture.  They are very expressive, and can often convey the 'truth' of a picture, when the main subject matter is not so forthcoming.  Sometimes they are the ENTIRE picture, and sometimes they just help to 'ground' it.

 Even when they are just a small part of it, I often get compliments on the hands, or the placement of them, or *gasp* a wedding ring, when two characters are not in a canon relationship. :D

I wish I could say that there is an easy trick to drawing them, but there isn't.  When I don't have a reference, drawing them as cylindrical shapes helps, and varying the lengths and angles of each etc etc, but my non ref hands are pretty shitty, so I shouldnt' be giving advice on them.

 Draw what you see.  Don't worry that they're hands, they're no different than a nose, or lips or a pair of ears.  They're just shapes and shadows like the rest of the body.

And feet!  Oh god I love drawing feet.  (I suck at drawing shoes, however, but I'm working on it.)
Snarry feet was one of my most popular drawings evah on deviantArt (until being forcibly deleted for PORNOGRAPHIC CONTENT of a minor.)  But that's a totally different post, trust me.  And looking back at this piece, it's really pretty crappy, compared to any of my new stuff, but it tells a story.  A sexy story!  And it sort of IS pornographic, even though all we see are toes and ankles and heels, but they promise so much more.  And that one curled big toe tells more about Snape's true nature (or what  I'd LIKE to believe about Snape's true nature) than any curled lip or eyebrow.

And like hands, feet add so much detail  and expression to a drawing.

Bottom line, don't fear them, embrace them!  Stretch yourself as an artist, and you'll improve from it.