So as an artist you probably tend to hear a lot of "Oh, hands are so hard to draw" and complaints of a similar ilk. Of course leaving out faces (which are inevitably the hardest to draw), is it really the case that hands are the hardest thing.
Well yes. And no. Because drawing portraits of people usually starts at the head and goes down, meaning that the head is the area people notice the most and pay attention to. Next is obviously hands because, well you use hands. Heck you're probably using them right now, so you probably know what they look like, and you can tell when they're not quite right. So yes, hands tend to have a certain level of detail and most people will draw them fairly often along with the face.
Now here's where I think its not the hardest. Have you tried to draw feet? Or shoes. And not easy to draw things like boots, but say, trainers. Can you envision a pair of trainers, right now, without looking at a reference picture? Probably not (unless you work in a shoe shop or something) but you know that if you see something like this:
You can identify that that doesn't really look like a trainer, even though it has things you may consider as being part of a trainer, like the tongue and the laces. But since feet/shoes aren't often drawn as much they tend to get less effort put into them (of which I myself am guilty of).
Now, from a purely technical point of view, yes, hands are probably still harder, but since feet tend to be less well practised yet still easy to tell mistakes for they often (for me at least) seem to be harder to draw than hands.
Well yes. And no. Because drawing portraits of people usually starts at the head and goes down, meaning that the head is the area people notice the most and pay attention to. Next is obviously hands because, well you use hands. Heck you're probably using them right now, so you probably know what they look like, and you can tell when they're not quite right. So yes, hands tend to have a certain level of detail and most people will draw them fairly often along with the face.
Now here's where I think its not the hardest. Have you tried to draw feet? Or shoes. And not easy to draw things like boots, but say, trainers. Can you envision a pair of trainers, right now, without looking at a reference picture? Probably not (unless you work in a shoe shop or something) but you know that if you see something like this:
Now, from a purely technical point of view, yes, hands are probably still harder, but since feet tend to be less well practised yet still easy to tell mistakes for they often (for me at least) seem to be harder to draw than hands.