Day 1 : Draw a Fist

Day 1 of 100 days of drawing icons with Adam Ming

📝 I tried to make 100 of these drawing demos - I might have gotten to 40. Do I feel bad for not getting to 100, not really, that goal got me to 40, there were a number of false starts like this in the newsletter, where I tried things and pulled back, part of it was responding to feedback, but the main thing is it doesn’t really suite my way of working.1

Demos, Prompts, and other Bonuses

Today’s prompt is: A fist

It’s important to realise that you are not trying to draw a fist. Instead you are trying to draw an icon of a fist.

Research Drawing

I chose a fist as the first icon in this series because you won’t have to google a fist to draw one, you can look at your own.

Start by doing some research drawings. Drawing a few versions of a fist while looking at your own hand. Using different tools or brushes will yield a variety of results forcing you to ‘see’ a fist in new ways.

Drawing the icon

Once I’m more familiar with the proportions of a fist, I go about trying to draw it in my illustration style This is the Icon I drew, I break the image in to 3 main components:

  1. The thumb and arm

  2. Four fingers ( take note where they are covered by the thumb

  3. The base of the palm (this tends to be forgotten when drawing fists)


💎 The important thing here is looking, you should be spending more time looking than drawing when doing an observational drawing.

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Leave questions or links to your drawings in the comments.

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For more ideas about research drawings, I recommend Tom Froese’s Drawing towards illustration course on skillshare.

1

This note was added in 2023, As I went back to edit and organize my previous newsletters. I wanted the archive to have well some archival value. Together these notes tell a story of how I Became a Picturebook Illustrator.

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Adam Ming