“Hands are difficult to draw”

Since I’ve got an exhibition of my life-drawings coming up in September I’ve been thinking about the importance of observational drawing, and life-drawing in particular, within my artistic practice. The act of drawing plays an important, if sometimes behind-the-scenes, role in nearly every artists’ practice, regardless of what type of visual artwork they make. For me, drawing is the main artform I work in, as I noted way back in 2014 in a post called Drawing as a principle medium, or, “why I love drawing” (Part One). And here’s the thing I’ve learnt: drawing from life changes your visual perception. You learn to look and see in a way that I don’t think that anyone else ever does. Let’s take the familiar lament that hands are difficult to draw. Hands are intrinsically no more difficult to draw than any other part of a human being, but many people have problems with them when they start drawing. The problem lies in the fact that we erroneously believe we know what hands look like. The…