Today, I have mostly been embarking on one of my habitual quests to finally learn how to draw cartoon hands properly, sometime before the heat death of The Universe.

This latest half-arsed attempt was triggered by two things; firstly, I’ve got to draw a cartoon header for a blog of mine I’m currently rescuing from the clutches of Tumblr and; secondly, the other day I came across a set of PDFs of the complete Asterix the Gaul books, which I’d forgotten I had and --flipping through them-- I remembered how much I always admired Albert Uderzo’s mastery of hands. In my less than humble opinion he’s 'The Boss' when it comes to knocking up a cartoon paw or two. He seems to draw them from any angle and in any position, with complete ease.

So, in a bid to "Learn from the master" I got out my sketchbook and, with one eye on the Asterix PDFs, tried to recreate some of Uderzo’s hands. The results are mediocre, to say the least. But, who knows, maybe if I keep plugging away I’ll eventually manage to churn out something that is recogniseably the work of a member of the same branch of the evolutionary tree as the great man himself.

Anyway, as Isaac Newton once said: "If I have seen further than others, it’s by using my binoculars!"