2. The foreshortened view of the hand (fingers coming toward the viewer) can be a daunting assignment for a student to draw.

5. Start the exercise by posing your hand in an interesting position

6. place the viewfinder over your posed hand and draw all of the shapes and wrinkles that you see onto the viewfinder with your vis-a-vis pen. vis-a-vis pen.

8. on your sketch pad, outline the edges of your paper template

9. after wearing down the sharp edges of your graphite stick on another paper, tone your sketch pad paper within your outline to an even medium gray color.

10. Use your viewfinder to pinpoint the cross hairs, and then copy them into your toned paper.

11. Use a paper towel to smooth your ground into an even silvery finish.

12. Place your viewfinder on a piece of white paper so that your drawn hand can be easily seen.

13. now you are ready to transfer the basic information of your hand onto your toned paper . Carefully transfer each shape, line and angle from each quarter of the viewfinder onto the corresponding quarter of your paper. Be sure to compare the angles you see against the cross hairs, your vertical and horizontal landmarks.

14. Now that the basic information is drawn onto your paper, put down the viewfinder and reposition your hand just as it was under the viewfinder. Make sure you have a lamp that can shine on your hand to create high contrasts and a wide range of value for your drawing. Now you can fill in all of the details, wrinkles, lines, highlights and shadows that you see .

15. A good technique is to erase out the ground around the edges of the hand to help it ‘pop out’ into a three-dimensional look.

16. Your eraser is actually another way to define shapes just like having another pencil...erase out the highlights you see...the light will be an exact shape...erase it in that shape.

17. Since you have a strong light on your hand, you will also see dark shadows...be sure to darken them in. Be sure also, to include as many sensitively drawn lines as you can. The details you include are a critical element of your drawing and will add a great deal toward creating a successful artwork.

18. your finished product might look something like this...the artist here continued the rest of the hand outside of the drawn format...if you think of a way of infusing some creative element into your piece, by all means, include it!

19. ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES

20. THE END