Our Hands – as Focus

I am guessing that you have become more aware of your hands and what they touch in the last few weeks.


Image by Manuel Darío Fuentes Hernández from Pixabay

Hands are always with us, so often they can be the subject of drawing assignments in school.

drawing of hands linda germain

This is a hand drawing that I did in art class.

Hands can be intimidating too. They are complex and ever moving. Plus you need at least one hand to draw with and the other to pose.

I offer you this drawing challenge to you:

  1. Get a pen and paper
  2. Move and model your hand into different positions
  3. Do a loose line drawing of your hand
  4. ahhh, pause, breath
  5. Were you focused on the lines, wrinkles, and shapes of your hand?
  6. Repeat – Enjoy

counter drawing of hand

The goal of the drawing is not perfection or even realism.

If you are new to drawing your hand, then the goal is to slow down and start to see the 3 dimensional hand. And to begin to train your eyes and drawing hand to work together to flatten the 3-D to 2-D on paper.

open hand sketch

I actually like my wobbly, imperfect drawings. Somehow they feel “real” to me.

I hope you give it a try.

If you would like to explore more about line drawing and then using those drawings to make trace monoprints, then check out the upcoming online class, SEE, draw, Print. It starts April 17th, 2020.