Hands
Hands
As you have surely noticed, all runway models are deemed unexpressive, deadpan and expressionless. This is done to keep the focus on the designs and fashion collections - this is how you should treat your fashion drawings. There should be no attention to detail when designing your fashion templates, the same goes for hands.
It is best that you represent the hand without depicting every single ;finger and nail, even blocking the hands from view if it might cover up the garment. A quick scrawl might accurately depict the knuckle, rather than a painstakingly drawn hand.
Drawing the hand clenched into a fist on the hip is also a good way to take shortcuts and spend less time on fingers - just use discretion when making such choices, this must still look pleasing to the eye and proportional. If you decide to draw the full hand, ensure the hands don’t look like animal claws. Even if you decide not to draw hands, try to learn for practice - its best you familiarise yourself with all the fashion figure drawing skills. Practice will make perfect! Blind Contour drawing is a favourite with drawing teachers
to develop hand-eye communication. Contour drawing is essentially outline drawing, and blind contour drawing means drawing the outline of the subject without looking at the paper. The end result doesn’t matter - what is important is carefully observing the subject. I prefer to slightly stretch the meaning of ‘contour’ to include lines generally, so that from time to time the line will wander across the form and back out again, capturing little details along the way. In this exercise, avoid lifting the pencil from the paper so that the line is as continuous as possible, and most importantly, DON’T PEEK! If need be, work with your sketchbook under the table. If drawing on loose paper, you may need to tape it in place.
The Aim: Practice following contours with hand and eye.
What You Need: A4 sketch paper and pencil or pen.
What to Do: Now, just draw your hand! Place the pencil near the bottom of the page, then looking at the edge of the wrist; begin to follow the line, going very slowly and steadily. Try to make your pencil follow every slight curve and bump. When you get to a crease, follow it in then back out to the side and carry on. Don’t rush. Concentrate on observing every little detail. Review: When you’ve gone all around the hand, stop and look at the end results. Funny? But look how some areas of your drawing are amazingly accurate. Sure, the large areas might be out of proportion to each other, but you will notice that some parts are far better drawn than when you were looking at the paper!
Going Further: You can also try this exercise with other objects - leafy plants or furniture. People and animals can be pretty funny too, and it is great observational practice.
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NEW CONTENT!!! I have opened the site for guests to post their personal tutorials on drawing hands. I think this is a good way to gain more perspectives on alternative drawing techniques. Click the artist’s name to learn more about them or see their sites. Click the thumbnail to see an enlarged tutorial:
Odduckoasis - Hands drawn from all angles, use this as a template for your fashion figure drawing.
Gurukitty - Covers all angles of the hand, drawing quick sketches of hands rather than detailed fine art - perfect for fashion illustration.
Brandon McKinney - Shows hand skeleton and tendons, great for understanding the hand shape.
There are more visitor tutorials on this page related to general anatomy that cover the aspects of the hands as well.
The thumbnail tutorials belong to the artists, please do not attempt to redistribute or copy these. Please contact the artists for permission to use them on sites.
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