Artist of the Year 2025: Masterclass - Season 1 Episode 35 Painting Hands
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00:00Today's tutor is artist and leather smith Brogan Bertie, who won his heat on Portrait
00:16Artist of the Year with an exciting interpretation of actor and dancer Leighton Williams.
00:23What Brogan captures is attitude.
00:25Yes, it does play on the likeness of persona rather than likeness on the day.
00:31What a yummy, beautiful bit of painting.
00:36At the semi-final, his striking depiction of Jolie Richardson secured his place in the
00:40last round of the competition.
00:43There is so much about this picture that really works for me.
00:45The hand on the chest, the cheekbones, it's completely compelling.
00:51His final double portrait of acting couple Andy Serkis and Lorraine Ashbourne, alongside
00:57his powerful commissioned painting of partner Steph, saw him take the title of Portrait
01:02Artist of the Year 2024.
01:05I can't describe how I'm feeling.
01:08It's not gone anywhere.
01:09I haven't digested it at all.
01:11I feel incredible.
01:12I feel mind-blown.
01:15For his winning £10,000 commission for the National Galleries of Scotland, Brogan painted
01:20award-winning broadcaster Lorraine Kelly.
01:23I'm going to do an oil sketch, something much looser than I'd do for the final thing.
01:31Would you clap?
01:32Who was moved to tears by the final portrait.
01:35Shall we have a look?
01:36Oh, Brogan, that is so beautiful.
01:37You've got me.
01:38I'm sorry I'm crying, but that is absolutely gorgeous.
01:48Brogan is a master at capturing his sitter's essence through their body language, and hands
01:53play a significant role in his compositions, making him the perfect guide for today's masterclass,
02:00Painting Hands.
02:18I think hands are something that can be quite daunting for a lot of people, and people tend
02:26to avoid them.
02:28And I think it's just so worth having a shot at hands.
02:31So what I'm going to try and do today is simplify the process down, demystify it, and give you
02:36kind of a step-by-step where you can paint some really juicy, gorgeous hands to add a
02:41bit of life and a bit of body language to a portrait.
02:44I'm going to do a study of a close-up of Kemi's hands here, so we're going to do it
02:49from life.
02:50And so what we need to do first is to set the hands up.
02:54And yes, that would be amazing if you can take that off, because I want to get the whole
02:58hands.
02:59What we're going to talk about is really the planes of the hands and how we can see shapes.
03:02So I want to see the whole hands.
03:05Sometimes it can be really fun to paint rings and sleeves and everything, but I think for
03:09now that's beautiful.
03:11That looks really good, actually.
03:12Is that comfortable?
03:13Mm-hmm.
03:14Amazing.
03:15So we're going quite small today.
03:17I'm doing this on a gessoed panel so everything's smooth and beautiful and sits on top the way
03:24that I usually work.
03:26And I'm mixing some burnt umber, some soft white, and I'm going to use some liquid to
03:34mix a really juicy, transparent color to do my sketch with.
03:42That's a beautiful pose.
03:43Kemi very helpfully has sleeves, which give us a nice reference for where to cut the hands
03:49off, where to start the hands.
03:52So I'll start with painting the sleeves and look at where they are in reference to each
04:00other.
04:05Really at this sketch phase, what I want to do is to kind of not look at them like hands.
04:12When we think about hands, there's so much detail, there's so much proportion, there's
04:16so many fingers, there's so many fingernails, it's all very confusing and overwhelming.
04:19So what I want to do is really simplify it down into bigger shapes, more abstract shapes,
04:25and focus on the big picture.
04:31So firstly, where the hands intersect, I've basically got two shapes.
04:36So I'm going to do the first hand with the wrist here and the knuckles like that.
04:46If I look at the outline of the hand, it's a funny little shell shape.
04:53So I'm going to not think about what I think hands should look like and how I think fingers
04:58should sit.
04:59I'm actually going to completely abstract it and create this weird conch kind of shape.
05:06And that's our first hand.
05:07I've ignored the thumb on Kemi's other hand because I don't need that information yet.
05:13That's not important to me.
05:14I'm looking at the big picture, the big shape, and I can bring that thumb in later.
05:22It's more important that I get the big picture right.
05:28It's so easy to get distracted by everything else.
05:42And what I've noticed is that that hand is much lower, that second hand I'm painting.
05:48Their wrist is much lower than the other one.
05:51And see, my brain started to fill in what I thought that should look like.
05:56You just have to always double check and make sure your brain isn't making assumptions and
06:02filling in the gaps.
06:12What I really love about this really transparent kind of gloopy mix of the liquid and this
06:18paint is when I've gone too high or I need to adjust something, it's really easy on this
06:26really smooth panel to just correct.
06:30And all of that will be painted over, like don't be precious about that.
06:33But that helps me with the sketchy nature of this first step of the process.
06:42At this stage, I like to separate the hands into three planes because it makes it easier
06:45to simplify the whole process.
06:47You've got the flat plane of your hand, the back of your palm there, that first bit of
06:51your fingers, and then the second bend of your fingers.
06:54And that's usually how a hand separates and bends.
06:58The top, we don't need to worry about that much.
07:00It usually all moves together.
07:02But these planes all tend to capture different bits of light.
07:05One tends to be in shadow, if you can see like that, or that bit's in light.
07:11That's what helps us to break up into more abstract shapes.
07:17Then I'm just going to put a vague gesture of the sleeves in.
07:27They're not important during this study, but still we always talk about hands in how they
07:34interact with everything else of the body.
07:36So sitting in the cradle of Kemi's dress there, that all helps to ground the hands, make them
07:44feel more real, make them feel tangible.
07:46When I see a painting, I want to see the weight of the hands and that helps me connect
07:49to the sitter.
07:50So that's really important.
07:51But for now, I'll just do a gesture at that.
07:58And then I'm going to go into the detail of the hands, which when we look at Kemi's hands,
08:06even though we know there are four knuckles, we can only see two.
08:13So I can't see Kemi's pinky finger.
08:15I'm not going to add it in.
08:16I'm not going to suggest that there should be four digits that we can see.
08:22This is how the hands look and I'm going to follow exactly what I can see, which is two
08:27knuckles and then their thumb coming up out of here.
08:46So in this sketch to indicate some shadow, I've just filled that in with this liquiny
08:51mixture.
08:52So I'll go over that later, but just for now, for clarity, you can see exactly where that
08:58shadow is going and how it indicates that the hand is bending, that that's a different
09:04plane.
09:15So our light source is coming from here.
09:17So similarly, the back of Kemi's hand is also in shadow.
09:22So I'll do the same thing.
09:28And in sketches like this, when I've gone a bit messy and I've also, I understand what
09:35that first layer says, I put a little bit more of my burnt umber into the mix.
09:43So we get a slightly darker sketch layer, which gives us a bit of clarity while we're
09:48working on this.
09:50You see if that goes on, that's a little bit darker.
09:54I'm just going to use that to keep carving out exactly what I want to see in Kemi's hands.
10:03So this phase, it looks very messy, but don't be afraid of the ugly duckling phase.
10:07What you're getting down is a lot of information.
10:10You need to be loose with your sketch.
10:11You need to allow it to go through this phase.
10:13And that's why I'm using this slightly darker mix, in order to just clarify some of the
10:19things that might get lost in your sketch, or that you need to just make sharper as you
10:24go in.
10:25But I know that these messy bits are my shadows.
10:30And that just helps me to understand where the bends have to be.
10:34So if the shadow's there, that's where the bend of their knuckles needs to be.
11:05Usually something that's really helpful with hands is that there's a V at the top of our
11:10fingers, which is where they slope upwards into the middle finger, which is usually the
11:16tallest one.
11:17And that V helps us to shape the fingers in proportion to each other when they're on our
11:22model.
11:23So I can see on Kemi's that their index finger slopes right into their middle finger, which
11:29here gives me that neat V there, and lets me get everything right in proportion to each
11:36other.
11:37So I'm ready to move on to blocking in now.
11:45We literally only need this sketch to start with, in my opinion, because what I'm going
11:48to do with the blocking in is to fine-tune the boundaries of Kemi's hand, and that will
11:56help us carve out the shape and kind of rectify anything that we're not certain of.
12:00And I find that easier to do in the process while I'm working with colour, while I'm blocking
12:05in.
12:06So I'm going to go straight into their dress.
12:15And that's going to help me because that's all of the space around the hands.
12:20So what I'm doing is isolating and kind of confirming the shapes that I've used.
12:31So even doing that there, I think the section from their wrist to the edge of their thumb,
12:39I've done it too big.
12:42So to notice that, I've just used a negative space, and I'm going to just rectify, carve
12:48that in, make that a straighter line and a longer line to then the edge of their other
12:55thumb, which in comparison is really a curve.
13:05Where the other hand is angular, that's a curve.
13:07This is why really a lot of this process comes from painting itself rather than the sketch,
13:12because it's so much easier to see while you're doing it and while you're self-correcting
13:18the whole time, which is why I love using the Liquin as well, because everything stays
13:24malleable and stays juicy and you're able to push things around.
13:28It's not corrective like you have to take things away, but you just push and carve and
13:32sculpt.
13:33And that's why I love this blocking in stage.
13:38I've gone in with a kind of French ultramarine-y colour.
13:43Their dress has a lot of colours in it, and I'm not focused on that while I'm doing this
13:49study of the hands.
13:50So I'm just going to create a vague, kind of darker backdrop on which their hands can
13:58sit.
13:59But I'm not fussed about the detail yet.
14:20I'm starting to add some colour into the planes that we divided, and we've started off here
14:25with the way Kemi's fingers curl round.
14:27So that end plane of their fingers is quite dark.
14:31I'm going to go in now and do the same for this side, where the back of their palm is
14:39in shadow.
14:41And just blocking off these big sections is going to help me to see the structure overall,
14:49and then I can finesse those little details as it develops.
14:54What I would say is, don't be nervous at this stage, because you can correct everything
15:01that happens here.
15:04This is all just to gather an idea of what it looks like and how it's going to come together
15:08in the final painting.
15:09There's a lot of editing to do if you need to and if you want to.
15:12So you have to keep letting these steps happen as they happen.
15:18This filling in stage, when there's no real grounding, there's no real detail, it might
15:22be quite hard to see, to imagine, to project yourself into a future where this is done.
15:27But it all comes together.
15:32I'm using Hog Hair brushes, the same that I always use.
15:38They're rough, quite stiff brushes, which means when I do put the paint down, we get
15:44these gorgeous brush marks that you can see really distinct bristles, and I really love
15:50that style.
15:51And I really like how it helps the paint to go onto the panel.
15:55I've gone smaller for these panels because I want a little bit more control over the
16:01defined planes of the hand.
16:04And then I will go smaller again for doing the darks and the small details, the fingernails
16:09maybe.
16:10We come up against this idea that you start big, bigger brushes, bigger brush strokes,
16:14and we go smaller and smaller and smaller.
16:16It's almost like we're finding, we have to do all of that big work to find the detail.
16:21So we really have to earn our right to use a small brush.
16:41Hands feature so heavily in my portraits.
16:44I think I see hands as a real tool to connect to the sitter and to connect to the subject
16:50of the portrait.
16:51They're so human, like that's the way we connect to other people is, you know, by shaking a
16:55hand or holding someone's hand.
16:57And I just think having hands present in a portrait is such a vehicle for inviting the
17:03viewer to see that this is a person, this is a human person, we can imagine very easily
17:08the act of holding someone's hand.
17:10And I think it just invites an intimacy that I really value in my portraits and really
17:14value in other people's portraits.
17:16I just find them such a deep connection to other people that I can't do a portrait of
17:22someone.
17:23I can very rarely do a portrait of someone without including their hands because it,
17:26for some reason, is kind of my first entrance into a person.
17:40I think sometimes the mistake with hands can be treating all the fingers like separate
17:52digits or the hand as kind of a weird higgledy-piggledy amalgamation of like so many fingers.
17:59And I actually think it's really helpful and kind of beautiful to imagine that actually
18:07the hand always is in, you know, tandem with itself.
18:12It's always moving together.
18:13And sometimes, rather than, you know, thinking that you're going to be so technical and do
18:19every single finger and every single knuckle, allow the hand to like fall into itself.
18:24You know, that sometimes these fingers, if they're sitting together on someone's lap,
18:29they'll look like just a swoop of colour.
18:33You can kind of see in Kemi's, even with the sketch that I've done, that these fingers
18:39here on the bottom are kind of falling into each other.
18:42You can see that there's not a lot of, because there's, you know, not much at all at the
18:47moment.
18:48But even as I finish, I might not put so much distinction between those two fingers because
18:54I think I've grouped them together.
18:56There's something quite strong in allowing the things that fall together naturally to
19:02fall together naturally.
19:03So now that I've got these vague shapes and it's all a strange mess, I'm going to go in
19:09and try to distinguish the detail.
19:13So immediately, I want to get this dark shadow in where Kemi's thumb meets their other hand,
19:22because that's all very dark in there.
19:26And to me, the dark looks quite blue.
19:28So I'm going to go in with a blue under there.
19:34And this is a really satisfying part of the process that you begin to see the real shape
19:40and everything stops looking like such a mess and stops looking like it's all running into
19:44each other.
19:46This is the really lovely bit where you carve out the details that you've set the groundwork
20:22So I've started to place the fingernails just very roughly.
20:26And with more time, you'd go in and you'd do loads of detail on these nails however much
20:30you wanted.
20:31But I'm just going in because the fingernails are a great way of informing the direction
20:35of the fingers.
20:36They kind of give us a little one up to be able to see exactly where it's going.
20:41So this thumb now is going down, and that just gives us a bit of structure to the hand,
20:48which is really useful.
21:10So I think for now, I'm happy to leave the sketch there.
21:12You can see where I've started to bring in some more detail, but it's still quite loose
21:18and quite rough.
21:19I used the kind of burnt umber, quite a dark foundation.
21:25And then as I go on, I'll just pick more and more colours out that I can see like the blue
21:29of the highlights, the pink of their palm.
21:32I think as you go on through the process, they're the really exciting bits.
21:36As you find the detail, you can just add more and more colour.
21:39And that's what I really love.
21:40So hopefully that has demystified the process of painting hands, and you feel a little bit
21:45emboldened and a little bit excited to try it yourself.
21:47I'd really encourage you to do a study like this, and then hopefully go on to the next
21:51step, which will be including hands in a bigger portrait.
21:57If you'd like to find out more about these masterclasses, go to our website skyartsartistsoftheyear.tv.
22:40www.skyartsartistsoftheyear.co.uk