life practice WIP: hand

**Travis** · April 29th, 2003, 02:14 AM

My first painting using a real life subject: my hand. This way, I cant cheat and color pick from my reference photo.

Done with photoshop. About 2 hours in at this point.

Comments, crits and advice are welcome. Im new to this painting thing and want to learn.

**Rohan** · April 29th, 2003, 09:03 AM

nice one for your first life study! can see that your perspective/ angle relationships are a little skewed in places but I guess that comes from trying to keep one hand relatively still for a couple of hours and looking back and forth from screen to hand etc. A good thing I find when drawing/painting from life (especially with a subject that moves around a lot) is to get the most basic structure, proportions and perspective of the largest forms nailed first, and build from there(you've prob heard similar before). That way you can see how the orientation of your hand(or other subject) should be relative to your field of vision and u can relate the smaller, subordinate forms back to it. hope that makes sense. your background texture is a little distracting btw
keep it up

**Travis** · April 29th, 2003, 12:49 PM

Oh, lordy. Looking at it now, i see how goofed up the perspective on the palm is. Draw what you SEE not what you think you see. (repat as necessary!)

Yeah, the background is crap. I had started by playing with textured brushes. Once I got started working on the hand, i never paid attention to the background again. That's why I post, to re-gain some perspective.

Thanks for the crits!

Hmm I also see that the skin tones look very different on my CRT at work than on my LCD laptop screen at home. At home I was going for a warm reddish look. At work, the skin tones look jaundiced. Eeeew.