Feature Focus: Sculpting Hands

Second to the face the hands are the most expressive part of the human figure.

Many sculptors, even very talented ones, have trouble sculpting hands. They are one of the most complex features of the body to sculpt. This lens can't make sculpting hands easy or teach you overnight, but it will give you a good overview of the anatomy and skills needed to sculpt hands well with practice and work.

More Feature Focus

Feature Focus: Sculpting Feet

Second to hands and the face, feet are one of the areas sculptors often have trouble with. Like hands they are very complex appendages with lots of bones and are very mobile.

Feature Focus: Sculpting Eyes

Welcome to the first in a series of lenses about sculpting specific features. Eyes portray much of the emotion in a sculpture and are where you first focus when looking at a face. So come learn about the anatomy of the eye, sculpting, using glass eye...

About Hands

The hands (med./lat.: manus, pl. man?s) are the two intricate, prehensile, multi-fingered body parts normally located at the end of each arm of a human or other primate. They are the chief organs for physically manipulating the environment, used for both gross motor skills (such as grasping a large object) and fine motor skills (such as picking up a small pebble). The fingertips contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands. Like other paired organs (eyes, ears, legs), each hand is dominantly controlled by the opposing brain hemisphere, and thus handedness, or preferred hand choice for single-handed activities such as writing with a pen, reflects a significant individual trait.

Some evolutionary anatomists use hand to refer more generally to the appendage of digits on the forelimb, for example, in the context of whether the three digits of the bird hand involved the same homologous loss of two digits as in the dinosaur hand.Xing Xu et al.(2009). A Jurassic ceratosaur from China helps clarify avian digital homologies. Nature 459: 940-944

read the rest of the Wikipedia article

Hand Anatomy

In order to sculpt the hand well it's important to have a good knowledge of the underlying anatomy. Studying your own hands in various position and holding objects will help you gain a better sense of the way the anatomy moves and the range of motion in the hand.

Anatomy of the Hand Links

Anatomy of the Hand: Anatomy Home page
Muscles and Tendons of the Hand: Muscles and Tendons of the Hand

Hand Anatomy Video

Runtime:
views
Comments:

powered by YouTube

Models of the Hand

3-dimensional reference

Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Creating a Hand Armature

The armature is the supportive structure inside your sculpture. It's especially important for sculpting with polymer clay since small fingers can break without support inside. It also helps keep the hand the proper shape.

For more detailed information on armatures check out:

Building Armatures for Polymer Clay Sculpture

If you look at the photo of my armature on the right you can see that is is made of 5 strands of wire (22 gauge) twisted together starting at the wrist and continuing up the entire arm. Alternatively you could twist the wires only a short distance and wrap/glue/epoxy them onto a single thicker piece of armature wire. A little more wire (26 gauge this time) is wrapped around the wrist and secured with super glue to keep the wires of the arm from untwisting.

The fingers I wrapped with an extremely fine gauge jewelry wire (most craft stores carry it) which is about the thickness of sewing thread. The wires are secured with a little super glue. Wrapping the fingers like this give the clay something to grip onto, often clay will just slip off smooth wire.

Other Methods
A few other popular methods are:

Using cloth wrapped floral wire.
Wrapping a wire hand with floral tape.
Using two pieces of wire twisted together for the fingers instead of one.
Coating the wire with pva (white) glue.

Sculpting Supplies

I highly reccomend Blick Art Materials, I get most of my sculpting supplies from them.

Mini Modeling Tools

Super Sculpey

Armature Wire

Sculpting the Hand

Sculpting hands can be difficult and intimidating, the best advice I can give is to take your time, study the hand, and practice. You won't sculpt a perfect hand (or anythign else) the first time or even the second, it takes practice and time to learn.

The sculpture to the right is by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, one of the true geniuses of sculpture but it still took him years of study to get to that level.

Hand Sculpting Links

Linda Smith Originals: Sculpting Hands: Introduction: An online gallery of one-of-a-kind figurative creations by Linda Smith. Plus an online sculpting tutorial for artists! Step inside, Dolls, Elves, Fairies and Santas are awaiting your visit! Custom order inquiries are always welcome.
Polymer Clay Fan » Hand Tutorial: How to sculpt a hand
Modeling the hand: Polymer clay, including fingernails
Sculpting realistic male hands: by Fairy Song
Sculpting realistic female hands: by FairySong
Hand Tutorial: ... By Chua aka "Jonestation"
BRIGADA 1 SEXTO :: View topic - Sculpting hands - by Tony Barton: Sculpting hands - by Tony Barton

Video Demonstrations: Sculpting Hands

Sculpting Hands

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Runtime: 6:30
35468 views
0 Comments:

Sculpting a hand Part 2

Runtime: 5:59
17453 views
10 Comments:

How to Sculpt Hands in Polymer Clay

Runtime: 2:44
17502 views
10 Comments:

How to Make a Sculpture of Human Hands : Sculpting the Basic Shape of a Clay Hand Sculpture

4.11

Runtime: 2:58
12704 views
10 Comments:

Hand Sculpt

4.71

Runtime: 3:01
25666 views
10 Comments:

How to Sculpt a Bust : Sculpting Hands on a Bust

2.00 2.00 2.00

Runtime: 3:17
290 views
0 Comments:

powered by YouTube

Great Sculpting Books

Or check out Noadi's Art Sculpting Books aStore for the full list of sculpting books I recommend.

Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Drawing the Hand

Drawing, especially from life, helps improve your sculpting abilities. Practicing drawing hands, especially anatomy studies. It will help you cement the knowledge in your brain. Plus drawing can be done anywhere, bring a sketch pad with you any place you expect to wait a while and practice sketching. I do this all the time at the doctor's office or the dentist's.

Hand Drawing Links

HandTut By Ron Lemen: The hands, along with the face should recieve careful attention. for one thing, aside from the head, they are usually the only other exposed part of the body.
ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 9: Animation School Lesson 9: Hands- Simplifying Complicated Things
Human Anatomy Pictures for Artists Online: Drawing The Head and Hands by Andrew Loomis

Hand Drawing Videos by Riven Pheonix

Riven Pheonix has an amazing series of drawing videos on YouTube and you can also buy a series of DVDs of his lessons.