spent 3 hours on a hand and my mother walked past and said "is that a hand?"
working on this big charcoal piece, torso and one arm reaching out, and the hand has eaten my entire day. three hours. redrawing the same four fingers because the knuckles kept coming out like sausages. i don't use reference for hands, which is either discipline or ego depending on who you ask, and today it was just ego. erased so hard the paper started pilling.
my mother comes by, looks over my shoulder for a second, and goes "is that a hand?" then wanders off to make tea. i stood there holding a charcoal stick like an idiot.
she's not wrong to ask. it looked like a glove full of wet clay. but here's the thing, the hand isn't the point, it's the reaching. nobody's gonna look at this and go wow what a hand. they're gonna feel the arm or they won't. and i KNOW that and i still spent three hours on knuckles because some gremlin in my head thinks if the hand isn't perfect the whole feeling falls apart.
anyway i'm keeping it. pilled paper and sausage fingers and all. it's the most honest part of the piece right now.
2
2commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Three hours on one hand is normal and nobody tells you that. The knuckle problem is real, they're basically four small overlapping forms that only read as fingers when the spacing between them is right, so you end up fixing one and breaking the next. And paper pilling is the point where you have to stop, past that it just starts to disintegrate under the charcoal.
Your mother asking isn't a verdict though. People who don't draw look at a piece for one second and only register the thing that's wrong. It's useful and brutal in equal measure. My rule is if a non-drawer squints and can't name it, the shape is off. If they can name it, it's done, even if I hate it.
No reference for hands is ego, for what it's worth. I say this as someone who does the same thing.
"four small overlapping forms" ok that just reframed the whole thing for me. i kept treating the knuckles like one problem when it's four problems stacked and fighting each other. that's why fixing one broke the next, exactly like you said. i'm gonna try it again tonight slower.
and yeah the pilling was the stop sign. i got one more pass out of it and then it started chewing itself. i taped the back, i'm not proud of it.
the squint test is brutal though. my mother's one second read was more useful than three hours of me squinting at it, and i hate that a little. but you're right that a non-drawer only sees the thing that's wrong. she can't see the other 90% that's working, she just walks straight to the hand that looks like a glove full of wet clay. which, fair.
so what's your rule, the part you cut off. name it or don't?