When working out your lighting setup, it may help you to separate it from the drawing, that is to play with a light source to see how you can light your hand so its form in space shows up the way you like it. Shoot a reference, and then draw your hand using the reference.

Hi,you have done a really good job so far,as far as shading I notice that the line separating the wrist from the arm might be a little too dark….unless you make the arm darker.Also the thumb is bit too long ,take a look at the angle of the drawing compared to your hand again.That is what sticks out to me so far.

I see you struggle, and I guess that's because you missed one basic fundamental in shading. Before we decide to shade anything, it's important to know and be sure about the lighting setup and where the main light comes from. It seems to me that you haven't been sure about either of them. What you did was neutral form shading, that is the shading which result from the nature of the form (things that is farther from our eyes become darker and things that are closer become lighter). But you haven't involved the lighting into the form, and that will make your drawing look rather flat. So I will advice you to try to decide the lighting first, then we can talk about shading further.

Hmm... maybe you could try cell shading first, to separate the dark areas and the light areas, then add gradients within the cell shading and add details. This could be helpful to make sure that the darkest value in the light area is lighter than the lightest value in the dark area (right now it looks like the details on the fingers are darker than the shadows on the sides of the hand). I hope that helped, if you have any questions, please ask!

I noticed that your shadows are too light. I recommend you to add more contrast, so you'll have a larger range of value to the halftones. Also, you need to know the secondary shapes of the object. Some parts in the palm of the hand are round. You have to show that roundness with halftones. In fact, you need to know how to shade the three simple forms; spheres, cylinders and boxes.

You're on a good start! The thing about charcoal is that they're really fun to use at some time, but at some other time they can also be frustrating. It's normal though because the nature of charcoal itself is more punitive than graphite. Charcoal smudges, and doesn't get erased as well as graphite. So the key to using charcoal successfully is to layout the separation between light and shadow first, or 'form' as we call it. Only after that, it'll be easier for you to know where you should put the charcoal on. The common mistake people make in using charcoal is that they jump too early, and end up erasing and smudging the charcoal all over the place. In the end, the piece looks dirty. As I can see from your work, it's still in line art phase, thus I will say it's a bit early to introduce it to charcoal. I will advice you to take some more time to understand the form better. I've attached a sketch over on how I approach form of the figure. You see, I only separate it into two areas, one is light and one is shadow. That's the simplest form. By doing this, I can clearly see where I should put the charcoal on, and where I should stop and keep the paper clean. Check out Stephen Bauman, he's really good at presenting form, and how to shape them with clean and clear strokes.

I'm a total beginner myself but I've just started a similar project. I just went for it with charcoal and I've loved the process so far. I'd highly recommend some paper stumps (not sure of the official name) they really help for blending.

Wow those are soooo nice! I love your attention to details and even the small bounce-lights. Especially the girl with the cowboy-hat! did you use foto-reference?