Don’t Neglect The Hands
My little brother has aspirations towards art. He doodles on everything; paper, his arm, napkins. His caricatures are often cute, funny, or disgusting. He loves drawing people’s faces and usually over emphasizes certain features for effect. But I noticed, he never gets the hands right. They are usually too long, too short, or too stubby. When I mention this he says, “Yeah. Hands are hard. I need more practice.”
Another friend of mine wants to draw for DC comics. He creates very vivid super hero worlds, where characters blast the shit out of each other with death rays. But the hands, they’re just not right. I ask him about the hands and he says, “They are my weak point.”
I was at my aunt’s place, drinking her wine while she showed me paintings my niece had made. Her style was similar to Tim Burton, animeish girls with big eyes, who looked pretty but half dead. In all of the paintings, the girl always has her hands behind her back, or inside a purse. “She’s not good at drawing hands,” my aunt told me.
The problem with artists, dabblers, is that they’re often not willing to do the work required to become a professional. They’re not willing to spend the countless, boring hours it takes to learn how to draw something complex, like the hands.
And this is where many of us fail, whether in business, or seduction, or sport. We aren’t willing to learn the hands. We stick to what we know, the obvious, the easy, and hide what is difficult, or say, “Yeah, we can fix that later.”
Make time for the hands. It’s usually that task, or skill, the repeatedly hinders you from achievement. You know it must be studied, must be mastered, but you put it off, day after day, week after week, and you suffer from this procrastination. But when you get the hands right, they morph from the chore, to the most beautiful, skillfully executed, and expressive part of your craft.
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Great analogy Tony. Turning the weakest points into strength takes self examination, hard work and patience. I recently read that Arnold Schwarzenegger had really weak calves back in his bodybuilding days despite having a big chest and big arms so he would cut holes in his pants exposing his calves. When he went to the gym everybody saw the weak part of his body and this motivated him to train it harder and put in more reps and sets than anybody else, which eventually paid off big time.
Good post. I guess for me personally this applies to fitness. All the time I’m thinking “if I’d just do that.. ” and end up never starting. Pathetic really..