I'm working on oatmeal paper.

I'm using a fountain pen with sepia brown ink, it's really a brown ink, and a fine nib,

very fine actually.

This is a Waterman Paris and it's what I do in a lot of my sketch books.

So let's get going with some hands here.

Generally, whatever I'm drawing, I'm dealing with the parts as a joint to joint proposition.

So I've got the hand...

Here's the heel, kind of karate chop area of the hand.

The highlight's going to go here.

And so what I'm looking for are these jointed connections, and we'll notice here with this

hand, in this position it's really easy to see that you've got this series of planes

and each one at the knuckle joints is going in a different direction and then the wrist

is taken off this way too.

So this transition here...

And it goes on and in those fingers is of interest to us.

And we want to make sure even in a subtler pose, as we'll do in our next drawing, we

want to pick up those major plane differences in some way.

Maybe not every single one of them, but most of them and certainly, back of the hand to

wrist and then back of the hand or palm area to the fingers.

You want to show those two major transitions, those two major corners.

Corners give you structure.

Corners give you a sense of the real and so the more we can show how things break in space.

So I'm sketching, and even in a finished painting, I'll just correct.

That's a bad line and so I'll correct.

I might correct that three or four times and who cares?

It's just a sketch.

But like I say, even in my finished painting, I'll want to do that.

Now, fact is, we're slightly underneath this wrist and so when I pick up the fleshy folds

where the palm and the thinner elements over here, the karate chop area there.

As we make that transition down here, I want to feel that underneath-ness.

And that means whatever detail I pick up, at the center, that detail will tend to be

higher and at the sides it will tend to be lower and we'll feel that.

So if I can find that information, not on the contour, but moving...

So not down the form but moving over the form, then I'm going to feel in my drawing a certain

and actually, a great deal of three dimensional truth to it.

So I'm always looking for how to move the eye over the form, so when I pick up this,

I'm really looking at that as a simplified shadow shape of what's going on there.

That shadow shape is also a corner that moves me over, so notice I can move over the form

like a box, over the form like a ball or cylinder.

Then if I take that back of the hand or palm of the hand and break it this way, that's

going to tend to make us feel like we're on top of the wrist with that hand.

I want to feel like we're underneath, that it's going this way.

And so I'm going to play up this overlap here, put the hand behind the wrist, and that's

going to make a big impression on our audience.

Now, it's all about consistency, having kind of a game plan and being consistent.

And so, in my world, in this case, every time the form turns down or to the right, it gets

darker.

So this little area turned down and to the right and it got darker.

This went down and to the right, it gets darker.

And as long as I'm consistent with that, I can have quite a bit of liberty with how I

design those, what I leave in, what I leave out, as long as I consistently show that truth

there.

I could even have a little notation here so when I do my big, massive mural on the side

of Rockefeller Center, I'm going to have that hand drop off in value and fade away.

So I'll do a little crosshatching.

And I particularly love pin and egg because you've got a crosshatch, which means you have

to use line to suggest tone, to suggest value.

And that's an interesting idea is that since I'm the draftsman more than the painter, I

love line and so I sneak in that idea and I understand the painting truth through the

drawn truth.

That's how my mind works.

And so I like to pick up those little light is.

And it's quite all right if the hatching goes off into the environment.

It might suggest that I'm going to set that into a middle value dark environment, that

kind of thing.

And even how thing's are left unfinished can be a suggestion on how I vignette out.

So I'm always trying to picture make, trying to create something that even though it's

just a sketch, it's potentially a piece that will deserve a painted reality.

And the shadows are shapes, they're designs that I can exploit and make beautiful or challenging

or interesting.

Usually I'll have a side of the paper...

I'll have hatches where I'm testing my brush with oil or my pen with ink to make sure that

it's still making the mark I want it to make.

It's not drawing out or globbing up or something like that.

And when I do highlights...

I'll just do a few here just to make a point.

So when I do highlights, they're going to be on the corners and then they're also going

to be...

So that's structural.

They're also going to be gestural.

How do I get off the palm and into the wrist?

Here I'm going to have a little fun dance to get down over those wrinkles.

I'll stylize them here.

I'll maybe go over the...

And it might be lost and found.

It might show up, fade out, show up again as it bumps over those guys.

Maybe the highlight here is hot and here it's less hot and it fades out or something like

that.

So let's take this one now.

Okay, so what the hand in particular creates opportunities and problems, but this is true

throughout the body.

It's a pretty consistent set of truths on how this stuff is...

This information is collected and put together and its functionality.

The joints work in certain ways, the muscles work in certain ways.

They're either contracting or they're not.

You're either fighting gravity or giving into gravity.

It's passive and active, that kind of thing.

And so we want to see those transitions.

And so I really notice this.

I want to feel how the wrist moves into the hand, and so I'm going to stylize this a little

bit.

And so I notice this kind of contour developing.

That's little corners, and it could certainly be done with curves.

But every time there's a change in direction, it's suggesting a change in action.

And in this case, and the audience will help you figure this out because they know hands

better than they think they do, it's how the wrist moves into the hand.

So that's a joint that flexes, or I don't know if that works for you but does that.

So I want to feel that and maybe even play that up, depending on my style or my lesson.

The life lesson I'm learning in this class right now is to draw hands and to make wrists

fit in.

And that wrist works as a wedge and makes this lovely transition.

If it was a Renaissance painting, it would be an egg shape in here that the Madonna would

have, is her hands wrapping around the little belly of the baby Jesus or whatever the imagery

is.

And notice these hatches could move in exactly the same, if not contoured, direction of that

simplified structure, that box logic, or they can go any way they want.

You can make the hatches follow the form and actually track over the form as if they're

laying on the surface like it's a fine fabric stitched over, or maybe not so fine fabric

stitched over, and laying over that wrist, like a cuff or something.

Or it can just be stylized.

So I'm looking for interesting shapes.

And you can see this...

It wouldn't really do it in this simple sketch probably, but you can see this little vein

here in the reference.

I'll highlight that.

But notice how that goes from wrist to hand, and that's what I'm going to be looking for

is, particularly in the hands and the feet, I want to feel...

And we did a little bit of it over here, right here.

I'm looking for how the hand becomes the wrist and how the wrist becomes the hand.

And notice also we have this strong shadow shape that I'm, again, changing around a little

bit, as I like to do.

And that lets us know that that back of the hand is not just this boxy shape, but it actually

rolls.

And so what I like to think of is like a slice of a cylinder.

This would be where the fingers attach, like so.

This rolls over so it's going to roll out of light and that shadow will be here, here,

here, can be any place along that...

I scooted it over just a little bit, but anywhere along that would be great.

So I'm going to be interested, each place I work, I'm going to be interested in the

character of the part, you know, what kind of architectural idea is it, and of course

there's other ways to approach that problem, but that's the way I tend to do it and maybe

we'll talk about it.

What's that simple architectural shape?

It's not a finger, it's something instead of a finger.

It's an idea that I'm going to use to replace the finger.

In this case, this is going to be a series of little cylinders with maybe a little spoon

shape or conical shapes on the end or whatever I conceive of.

And this...

I'm going to simplify this out for time's sake.

So I'm just looking for shapes to replace, ideas to replace the label.

When you say it's a hand, it doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't give any context, any emotion, any truism.

It's just objectified and it adds no value to our life and to the discussion about life.

But if I say "cylinder", now at least it has an architectural truth and that gets me started.

Then I may well have some religious or psychological poetic truth.

So that might not just be a thumb.

It might be the thumb that we're under.

We're under some tyrant's thumb or something.

And so it can become a metaphor or an idea or something like that.

But it starts as a problem solving.

So almost all my marks are going down the long axis.

Because I do those, I'm thinking about how it moves across the short axis.

I'm drawing this and I'm thinking that, so I'm kind of multitasking.

And notice how...

Let's continue this on here.

Notice the value of breaking a contour inside, going from outside to inside.

When you do that, that's an opportunity.

That overlap or interlock is an opportunity to give us that three-dimensional idea.

We're starting to now say that this is a separate structure than this.

So by having that intrude into it, it's doing a lot of work for us.

It gets us in front of that a little bit and then we have the opportunity to see how it

bumps against...

Unless it perfectly blends in, which isn't often, it bumps against that and where we

have that bump, now we have a movement over the form that gives us a lot of good stuff.

So that's what we're doing here, is I'm inserting the wrist into the hand here.

Let's do it this way.

And by doing that, we're getting these things locking together.

But anyway, by locking, breaking that down inside that, it does a tremendous amount of

information.

One of the problems we have as realists, whether we're stylists or not doesn't matter.

The realist's problem is getting that idea of three dimension on a two-dimensional surface.

And specifically, the problem is how to feel like we're moving over the form.

Notice when we look at a contour or an object, most of the apparent information is that contour

shape, is how the edge meets the environment.

And notice it on a figure, most of the contours are all on the sides.

There's very few ins, and when you do get an in, it goes around and not over.

So when we can get anything that moves over the form in three-dimensional idea, curving

or stepping over it, going like a tube or going like a box, now we have an opportunity,

whether it's wrinkles or nails, dirty fingernails by the way.

They'll clean that up in Photoshop, they told me.

Then that gives us that coveted three-dimensional idea.

Of course, shadow does that too but notice, again, shadow's all going...most of the lines

are going down the form.

So any time we can break inside, and especially move over, even that little bit is giving

us a little bit of this thickness truth here.

That steps over.

All that's valuable information that we need.

When you do the highlights, you can just blast it out.

That doesn't do you a lot of good but I'll use it to pick up the tendonous connections.