I
love to draw hands. That's because hands have a life of their own.
Hands are pretty good at revealing what their owner really thinks. A face may listen to a boring speaker with what looks like rapt attention but way down below the hands are playing with keys or tapping on the table. Sometimes the hands are more than just magnifiers of their owner's true feelings. Sometimes they have feelings of their own. Hands may be macho, gay, happy, sad, lecherous or virginal, even if their owner possesses none of these qualities (these thoughts cry out for drawings to illustrate them. Sorry, I didn't plan this post very well). I'd love to do a short, pencil-test film of an extreme version of this idea where a guy's hands, acting completely on their own, grope the people around him and get him into trouble.
Here's a drawing where the excitable hand is frightened and clings to the face, which is only mildly disturbed. At least that's what I had in mind when I drew it. The understory about the excitable hand is sometimes for the artist only. Sometimes you want the understory to be so subtle that the audience isn't even aware of it.
Most stories don't lend themselves to this hand theory and those I board the normal way, as above. Even so, it still works for the occassional scene. I'll try to find some examples.
I love to draw hands. That's because hands have a life of their own.
Hands are pretty good at revealing what their owner really thinks. A face may listen to a boring speaker with what looks like rapt attention but way down below the hands are playing with keys or tapping on the table. Sometimes the hands are more than just magnifiers of their owner's true feelings. Sometimes they have feelings of their own. Hands may be macho, gay, happy, sad, lecherous or virginal, even if their owner possesses none of these qualities (these thoughts cry out for drawings to illustrate them. Sorry, I didn't plan this post very well). I'd love to do a short, pencil-test film of an extreme version of this idea where a guy's hands, acting completely on their own, grope the people around him and get him into trouble.
Here's a drawing where the excitable hand is frightened and clings to the face, which is only mildly disturbed. At least that's what I had in mind when I drew it. The understory about the excitable hand is sometimes for the artist only. Sometimes you want the understory to be so subtle that the audience isn't even aware of it.
Most stories don't lend themselves to this hand theory and those I board the normal way, as above. Even so, it still works for the occassional scene. I'll try to find some examples.
Beautifully put Uncle Eddie! I feel the same way about an actor's hands during a scene. They sure can say a lot about the character!
ReplyDeleteI agree. Hands are great ways to express emotion and character. I just find em really frustrating to draw :)
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Often I'll watch how a person emotes with their hands. Well-drawn and animated cartoon hands really make a character come to life.
ReplyDeleteMy theory is that one body part will always betray the others. If the hands were relaxed during a boring speech, the persons eyes would probably be roaming all over the room.
ReplyDeleteIf thats the case, which do you think is more revealing: the hands or the eyes?
In that hands betraying inner emotions idea, you articulated Ernie Kovacks' defining comedic moment, except he never quite did it. Now you'll have to bring it to life in animation, to enlighten the teeming, culturally undernourished masses. If John K. can get Weird Al to fund a video this long after he's musical and cultural dead meat, you can dig up Ed Ames to back you. It doesn't matter if a pop headliner is dead - Elvis hauled in more loot last year than when he was sucking back skillet grease and roof tar in his prime. Praise the Lord.
ReplyDeleteHands are very wierd.. Everybody refers to their own hands to draw from time to time and ive realized that there are only certain poses that hands can make to be legible as a hand. Sometimes a hand doesnt look like a hand in a wierd pose.
ReplyDeleteI love to draw hands as well. They're like little creatures of the subconscious. Perhaps it has to do with their reptillian nature, how we've evolved. They used to be used as claws for hunting and protecting territories and impressing mates. Perhaps some of that instict is still with us. Thus, that instinct translates into a cartoonist's work.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny how a hand* is the only body part that can contradict its own pose/movement - a bit like pushing and pulling at the same. Funny because push/pull is (at least i believe so ;) fundamental for so many things (music, storytelling, life, sinatra, anything!) and in hands it can be physically experienced in so many ways.
ReplyDeletehoping i make any sense at all(!),
d.
*and toes a bit, too!
Uncle Eddie master of hands !!!
ReplyDeleteUncle Eddie master of hands !!!
ReplyDeletePlease, everyone(including you, Eddie)--it's Kovacs, not "Kovacks" or Kovaks". ONE "K"!
ReplyDeleteI saw one show of Ernie's in his NY morning days where he was doing a show & tell with items sent him by fans; one was an ashtray labeled "Ernie Kovac", and he went off on a goodnatured riff about the travails of his last name--how everyone thinks it's "Ernie Kovac's Show rather than "The Ernie Kovacs Show", or spells it Kovaks, etc. As the possessor of a pretty unspellable name myself I can relate, and as he's dead I feel all living beings owe it to him to spell his moniker right. : )
-Back over to you, Eddie. Nice hands!
P.S. it's really weird seeing that board page from "Ducklahoma!" Good god...I can remember that like it was yesterday.
ReplyDeleteGreat post!
ReplyDeleteI also like it when the entire body is thinking something different than the face - like in Steve Martin's "All of Me" when half of his body wants to walk one way, and the other half wants to go the other way.
Hi Eddie
ReplyDeleteHands are fun to draw when doing a cartoon. You draw nice hands in SPUMCO and your own cartoons. I also think that John K., Tex Avery and Bob Clampett do great hands too. I love drawing hand posese when ever I draw cartoons.
Jesse
Jenny: AARRGGHHH! I probably still haven't corrected the misspelling of Kovacs in my profile! Kovacs isn't an English name but it conforms to the English custom of never spelling something the way it sounds. I'll bet in Hungarian (if that's where the name derives) the name is pronounced "Kovach."
ReplyDeleteYou, Jenny, are to be congratulated for not spelling your name "Jenee" or some New Age varient of that. You spell it Jenny and are thus in harmony with the consensus of history and the will of the gods.
I love your idea of having a character's hands get him in trouble in a scene where he's otherwise very polite. lol.
ReplyDeleteAs for finding a scene with great use of hands. The last one I seen with great use of hands is this.. http://splinedoctors.com/movies/4pm.mov
A little too hand dependent to keep interest for me, but you could create great scenes with hands integrated into them. I've always enjoyed thes use of hands in The Iron Giant myself.
i talk with my hands all the time. i slapped a co-worker once *on accident!!* while overly gesturing.
ReplyDeleteHands frustrate the hell out of me. makes me feel like i cant draw worth a lick.
Hands have always been Eddie Fitzgerald's best suit, his ace in the hole, his sine qua non...and guess what?
ReplyDeleteThere's a secret there.
----->They're all Eddie's hands. I mean, he draws his own hards all the time. I'm sure other artists do it, but I've never seen them do it. It's something to have a conversation with someone who's simultaneously drawing and also holding his hand up in a curious attitude every few minutes =, then furiously drawing away all without missing a beat of chat.
As for Kovacs: how the devil did you know it's pronounced "Kovatch"? Hmmm?! Because indeed it is! I heard that from a Hungarian many many moons ago...also that "Kovacs" is literally the translation of Smith in English--it's that common--and it may even mean that as well. Could Tom Minton have told me that, I wonder? I'm scouring my brain thinking of Hungarians I've met...not that Tom is Hungarian--oh! Now I remember; it was an old photo collector who was Hungarian who told me all this, way back when I worked at the collector's shoppe. Huh! Too much information, I'll bet.
As for my first name, the plainess and humble pie of it--when your last name sounds like a burlesque act, trying for 'unique' with the ol' prenom is overkill. ; )
I think we need a picture of your hands, Eddie!
ReplyDeleteJenny: The things you said about me cumpolsively drawing my hands and about your own last name were really hilarious! I made a guess about the pronunciation of Kovacs' last name; the English pronunciation just didn't sound like Hungarian names I'd heard in movies.
ReplyDeleteBrian: I couldn't get into the URL you mentioned. I don't know what the problem is. Maybe my browser.
Kali: I have a good picture of my hand! I'll post it soon!
ReplyDeleteHey, that was a fun dinner with John, wasn't it?
jenny: Oops! I should have spelled that "Compulsively!"
ReplyDelete"Hey, that was a fun dinner with John, wasn't it?
ReplyDeleteYes it was! We'll have to goto that pizza place you were talking about next time together! I loooooove your laugh!!!
Brian: I couldn't get into the URL you mentioned. I don't know what the problem is. Maybe my browser.
ReplyDeleteHm, maybe it's the .mov file format. Here's it is freshly uploaded to youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXZjH-GfqSU
Again, I think it's a bit too dependent on hands to keep interest but I really enjoy the first half of it. Also the meatyness of them is great.
I definitely agree that it is important to learn how to draw hands. Really, no matter how abstract or crazy you design a character, the hands still have to look and act similar to human hands orelse much of the illusion of life is lost. Even if this character has tenticles or some other type of appendage, they work best when they resemble human hands in how they do things. Quick Draw McGraw's hooves come to mind.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I've observed anyway.
eddie you are a hands-drawing master! your cartoon hands are top-notch, and something to aspire towards.
ReplyDelete(i love drawing hands too,i just can't draw them as good as i want to hahaha.)
You needn't apologise, Eddie; I just notices that I wrote "he draws his own hards all the time". Good grief.
ReplyDeleteUm, that's H-A-N-D-S, for the record. Yeesh!
Anyway, what's this with John saying "I wish I could paint"? Huh? I remmeber a painting he did for the New Yorker, for the movie review of "Last Action Hero" or whatever that Schwarzenegger(sp) film was...it was lovely. I thought he should do more...and he should!
Oh, lord, more typos...sorry! : (
ReplyDeleteHey Eddie,what episodes of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog did you worked on?
ReplyDelete