Never too many hands, I'd say. Another hand-drawing exercise and in the same time a moment spend on the gun. This was another quick sketchy exercise for me, right after hard exam (if you are wondering - I picked the topic for my exercise at random so it was a coincidence... and yes, I passed with flying colors). Anyway I was tired so it didn't go all that well but final result is acceptable so I am showing the process. Hands are tricky - sometimes easy, sometimes super hard. But that's why you practice! :)

Of course if you have any questions - feel free to write a comment, I will explain everything in detail.

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Of course there is no way to paint without sketching first (at least in my case), so on the separate layer I try to place all elements, finding proportions of the gun and hand, fingers and so on. Lasso tool is very useful in this, since I can resize and rearrange things to finally find the proper composition and proportions. I often regret that I can't do that on paper :D After the sketch is done I start painting some base layers with a hard brush. I pick part of the picture that are somehow separated and draw areas for them on new layers. It's good practice to have elements on the front on the separate layers than elements in the back. Then I paint a very simple background with a soft brush. Well, it's really just a white space and some shadow ;)

I start coloring the hand, first creating new layer. I then right-click it and change it into a clipping mask. With a dark color I draw mostly shadows, edges between fingers and part of the hand where light is weaker (light comes from the right side here, look at the shadow on the floor). I do the same thing with the gun, since I want to quickly get rid of the sketch.

I focus on the hand some more. At first I added some small dots for the texture but moment later I smudge everything away with smudge tool, trying to blend colors better and define proper shape for fingers. It's very important to show that fingers are basically cylindrical in shape but they do have harder edges where bones show. You want to show that on your drawing but be gentle as it's easy to make hand look old. I didn't do too well on this one, but at least it looks acceptable.

I add detail on fingers. Note how I paint fingernails. I draw edge with dark color where nail is placed on the finger, it's a bit sunken. Then with a lighter color the nail is painted, with an almost white edge and gentle shine. Skin on the sides should have a bit of lighter color since it's pressured by the nail. Soft brush is good for those task and smudge tool also helps great deal with the nails. Skin folds on fingers are kind of tricky to do, I never draw them well but if you want to know my technique you can take a closer look. I just draw dark and light lines and then blend them with smudge tool, trying to find the correct shape. It's easy to make dark lines too dark and folds become too prominent, watch out for that.

Finally I start painting the gun, I am already fed up with that hand. I wasn't really convinced that it looks okay, I was even wondering whether I should finish this exercise or not... But I rarely have occasion to paint weapons to I decided to continue and see if I can handle the gun. And it's very hard right now to even say something about it, since I know nothing about firearms! There is some advice: if you need to paint something you don't understand well (how it's build, how it works, why does it look that way) it's better to look for some additional reference or better touch that object, see it in 3D. Well I had it easy since I had a photo reference so I just "followed the shape" but sometimes it's not that easy. Not understanding what you draw can lead you to a serious disaster. People with very poor anatomy drawing skills tend to do very strange things with human body because they simply do not understand why and how it works.

That gun wasn't particularly hard to paint - high contrasts and small number of colors. I used mostly black and white, but set opacity of my brush to a lower level, so that I could use also shades of gray without switching color. I also used smudge tool a lot, to move around all those strange elements which I don't even understand. Dodge tool is pretty handy too, if you need to make your highlights brighter. To me hand was way more difficult than this gun. Well, you can clearly see that on the movie :D Anyway, it was a great exercise, you should try it too!

And that's the final result, at last!