Drawing Hands

INTRODUCTION

At the outset I should like to make clear the fact that there is no specific rule or formula for drawing any object and that the hand is no exception.

In view, however, of the complexity of form and movement inherent in hands, it is true that they do present many difficulties to the draughtsman and painter.

The achievement of fullness, variety and clarity at one and the same time is always a problem and particularly so, it seems, in dealing with the forms of the hand.

The fact that we are aware of being surrounded more often by clothed individuals than otherwise has led to our being almost as conditioned in our attitude to hands as we have become to the human face. They have come to be regarded as expressive features (emotive fragments) of the human being, subsidiary only to the face, and our incurious familiarity with them continually comes between us and any endeavor to view them in an objective or dispassionate