What Hand Reference is

Studio 07 · Hand Reference is a 3D hand, wrist and forearm on a small support in a lit studio. You change the pose, the viewpoint, the light and how the surface is shown.

It is made for drawing, painting, illustration and pose studies, especially when no photo gives you the exact angle or gesture you need. Show a left or right hand, stand it upright or lay it down, and start from a set of ready-made poses.

The four panels

Pose sets the gesture, hand side, fingers, wrist and the angle of the whole arm. Camera sets viewpoint and perspective. Light sets the window light and the study light. Display sets the background and switches between Skin, Clay, Faceted and Silhouette.

A good workflow

Pick a pose and choose Vertical or Lying. Find a camera angle, fine-tune the fingers and wrist, then finish with lighting and display to study planes, shadow or silhouette. Save it to The Archive when you want to keep it.