4 Rendering the hands

After laying in the light/dark shapes with a large brush, I use a smaller brush to add finer shapes and forms such as wrinkles on the skin and veins. Although this is time consuming – especially in an underpainting stage – most of this is going to show through under the thin layers of paint that I’ll eventually add on top.

Using a variety of edges to give the illusion of form and distance is key at this stage. I use a combination of soft, hard and lost edges here.