Anatomy Basics: Metacarpals and the thumb

Hand drawing in color pencil

Continuing on with the structures of the hand we are moving onto a new group of bones, the metacarpals, to  focus on a few of the movements the thumb. 

Thumbs tend be a challenge for many people and understanding the thumb's connection to the hand and how the thumb moves can be helpful in resolving many issues when drawing the hand.

Today, we are going to look at the role that the metacarpals play structurally in the hand and how the lower part of the thumb moves based on the connection the metacarpal makes to the wrist bones.

Let's take a look.

Drawing Basics: Figure proportions, female

I have been wanting to update the images for my original post on  the proportions of the human figure for sometime now and I am finally getting around to doing that. In the process of working on these new images I realized that it might be a good idea to create images for the both the male and female figures individually. Here is the first, listing some of the proportions for the female figure.

Let's begin.

Anatomy Basics: Skeletal Anatomy of the Hand, the wrist bones

Bones of the hand

I want to focus on the bones in the hand for a bit. This is because I noticed that many of the students I work with struggle with drawing hands and I thought this would be good subject to cover here in order to help out those of you who have the same difficulties.

Even though hands are a challenge to draw, one way to learn to draw hands is to start looking at and thinking of the hands structurally. Understanding the structures that make up the hand allow us to see what kind of shapes these structures will create in the hand and to draw the hand accurately in different positions.

Today, we are going to look at the skeletal structure of the hand to identify the grouping of bones at the wrists and see how they help with the movement of of the hand.

Let's take a look.

Color Basics: Subtractive color

It is easy to be confused as to why we call the color system we use when painting a subtractive color system. After all, we are adding different colored paints to each other in order to get a desired color  and it seems natural to want to think of it as an additive method of creating color. The trick in understanding why it is subtractive is to look at the characteristics of light. In doing this we will understand we are relying on the subtractive qualities of the paint to get our desired color.

Today, we are going to look at how light is affected by the pigments in the paint to better understand the subtractive color system.

Let's begin,

Drawing Basics: The picture plane in 1 point persective

Dealing with one point perspective has its challenges. It seems simple enough but we can sometimes run into unforeseen problems. This often happens because we miss some of the specifics about the guides of one point perspective. One example is recognizing the relationship between the front planes or front surfaces in a scene and the picture plane. Its a straightforward guideline but if it is missed the drawing will not come together how we would like.

This posts is going to take a look at the picture plane and positioning of the front surfaces in one point perspective respective to the picture plane. We will discuss the principle and show a simple explanation using an exterior scene. 

If you would like a refresher on one point perspective visit this link. Otherwise, let's get started.