100 Days of Hands

After completing my drawing challenge of 100 hands, one per day for 100 days, I feel I learned many things from the experience.

1.  I learned that the more practice I get at one complicated part makes be better adapted to drawing the whole.  The hands were my weakest drawing point and now it seems much stronger.

2.  A lot of patience is needed to complete a goal.  I got pretty tired of the exercise near the middle and it was sheer determination that allowed me to complete it to the end.

3.  It has become a habit now and I don't really want to stop.  As much as I wanted it to be over with in the middle, now I want to keep up practice for nothing more than my own amusement.

4.  The challenge has made me look at fellow artist and their work more critically.  I saw a portrait by my friend recently and couldn't get over how well he painted the subject's hand.  Now I seem to be staring at hands wherever I go.

5.  The subtleties of old hands, young hands, baby hands, men's hands vs women's hands is much more clear to me.

6.  I learned and memorized the names of the bones of the hands and feel empowered by the knowledge.

7.  I have now started drawing 100 days of feet.  They don't seem to be as complicated as hands but there are subtleties there that need to be captured to get the gesture and rhythm in the feet as well as the hands.

Hopefully I will be keeping up the exercise as I tackle client's work and children's books in the future. In the meantime, I don't think I will ever be the same because of this experience.

Have you an area you wish you drew better?  The nose?  The ears?  Hands?  Feet?  Challenge yourself to draw that one thing for the next 100 days and see where it leads you.  Trust me, it will change your whole life.