Pencil Sketch

Hands are notoriously difficult to do Amy. I am not great sketcher, but I'm sure that someone here could help you with lots of advice.

Proportions good - hands are, as Adele so very truly says, though in far more restrained tones, an absolute bugger to draw and paint. There's a strong tendency to draw them at least a couple of sizes too small; I rarely draw or paint figures now, but now and then draw my own hand to, um ...... keep my hand in. Practice is your friend here - that thing you find most difficult to draw, just keep drawing it, establish the outline shape before worrying about the finer details, and in the case of hands (and feet) they're almost better too big than too small. (I bet someone will disagree with that - probably we all make different mistakes, in our very own way.) If you want a severe criticism of your drawing, I'd say it was a bit too even tonally - i.e. no real indication of light and shade, shadow - and I'm not convinced by the face: granted you didn't have the room to make much of it, but the nose in particular looks so short as hardly to qualify as a nose at all: if he were looking down, the nose would be more prominent, much more so than mouth and chin. Apart from that though - we've all seen a LOT worse than this - all you need is practice, and perhaps a book on drawing the figure (there's an e-book by Victor Pérard which has been helpful to many); also work from live models if you can; friends are fine, when you've stopped them giggling self-consciously, and really look at them hard - draw what you see, not what you think you know, if that makes any sense.