Revisit Sketching Hands

Like many people, I used to be very intimidated by the sheer thought of trying to draw hands.  What helped me was first working with a thumb and finger.  Once I felt comfortable with those, I then tackled the hand.

Another thing that helped me was using the blending technique.  If I could get the contour line drawn correctly, I would then work with the form dragging and moving graphite in from the edges with a tortillon or paper stump.  Not sure why but I prefer the tortillon.

At a future Library Tuesday Meetup with our sketching group and guests, I hope to share my process hoping it might help others get past their fear of drawing hands.

These are examples of what I've been working on for practice and for sharing....using different type pencils on a couple different paper surfaces; with or without a tortillon and one example I used a paper stump.

I need to do more practice without blending by using the pencil itself to softly blend pencil strokes.  I tend to be a bit impatient and instead grab the tortillon. 

Copier Paper:

Stonehenge 90 Paper

Newsprint scanned as document instead of photo to remove the brownish color of the paper (for printing purposes).

These were done a few years ago on cartridge paper when I was first learning to work on hands.