Dimension and Omitting Perfectionism

        Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog! On today's blog, I will be focusing on creating dimension and also omitting perfectionism, as seen in the title.
        I've never drawn a hand to make it look realistic, so this was a first. I'm not going to lie, though, I was excited to try it out, to see how far my skills and practice could take me. Luckily for me, Claire Watson Garcia left step-by-step instructions as a guide to how to draw a hand"
        "1. Trace your nondrawing hand, palm down, fingers together or spread.
             Draw the folds in your knuckles.
         2. Put in shadow shapes if they are present, squinting to see them.
         3. Use contour drawing to fill in specific nail shapes.
         4. Fill in an overall skin value and use your finger to smooth out the surface.
             Use your directional lines to map out rows of knuckles in a slight semicircle" (Garcia 69).
        I followed the given directions, and I'm glad I did. I never thought about tracing your hand, and only then adding the designated details to it, so it would turn out proportional and the right size. 

The finished drawing of my hand

        This is actually my hand, which means of course that I drew it not from a drawing. I was surprised with my end result. I didn't think it would look nearly as realistic as it does. Though it does look pretty good, it's not perfect. Sometimes that may annoy me, but Garcia teaches otherwise. No artist is perfect, and all the imperfections we make are unique to us, which makes every artist different, in their own way. Generally we are scared of it being imperfect because we are afraid of being vulnerable, of being ourselves in our art, and we need to get over that fear, because it's who we are (Garcia 68). The way that she worded made me think hard, because really, she's right. There's no point in trying so hard to make it perfect, because we'll never get it perfect anyways. Even though my drawing isn't perfect, I think it's decent; decent enough to be able to tell that it is a hand. That's what matters most.


Do you agree that perfectionism deprives us of our unique selves being shown through our art?


Garcia, Claire Watson. Drawing for the Absolute and Utter Beginner. New York,

     Watson-Guptill Publications, 2003.