The big post of things about hands!!! I don’t consider myself qualified to teach art at this point in my life, but I don’t see any harm in sharing observations I have made. In learning to draw hands over the past few months I’ve tried to take a lot of notes, with the end goal of hopefully creating a video tutorial one day. I personally learn better from videos than written or illustrated instructions, but I’ve never found any one video that really demystifies drawing hands. I believe that in order to tackle such a difficult subject it is important to understand what makes it difficult, and this is not often addressed. If you understand the problems you can systematically solve them…
Drawing the hand is almost like drawing a whole person. Similar number of “major masses” and a big range of motion.
Because the hand is so versatile, it’s hard to pick a pose when practicing. Most individual body parts are drawn from different angles, whereas the hand must be drawn from different angles and in different poses.
Hands have a lot of moving parts and from any given angle many of these will be partially or wholly obscured by other parts. Drawing “through the form” results in confusing construction lines that are difficult to interpret.
Hands are expressive and give big clues as to what a character is doing. Odd or unnatural hand poses detract heavily from your overall piece. Most people avoid drawing hands because of this.
The thumb flexes along a different plane than the four fingers and sits on its own deviant metacarpal. Drawing the hand in perspective is hard enough, but adding the thumb in relation to the rest of the hand at a convincing angle? Forget about it!
Hands are typically simplified into box and cylinder forms, but almost every part of the hand is a combination of angles and curves. No one simplified form really describes these parts.
Hands interact with other objects, like all the time. They’re tricky enough to draw on their own… this isn’t helping anyone.
Hands have a lot of bony landmarks, veins, and tendons, all visible at the surface level. These are obstacles when trying to render them realistically.
Hands are asymmetrical from every angle. Every part, every time.
I think that about covers the major issues we face when trying to draw hands. Now here are some observations and facts that you can use to fight back!
The width of the first three fingers (index, middle and ring) is the same as the width of the wrist. The pinky and thumb both emanate from the parts of the palm that overhang this line.
The palm of the hand is more of a pentagon than a rectangle (Thanks, Jim Lee!).
The length of the middle finger is approximately the same as the length and width of the palm.
The length of the phalanxes (finger bones in this case) diminishes in size as they get further from the palm. The second (middle) phalanx is 2/3 the length of the first (proximal), and the third (distal) is 2/3 the length of the second. You don’t really notice this since the first knuckle is “inside” the palm and we tend to think of the fingers as starting at the “finger crotch”.
The thumb has no middle phalanx, only a proximal and a distal one.
The thumb is rotated 90 degrees from the angle of the four fingers. So the fingernails point “up” and the thumbnail points “to the side”. This obviously changes depending on the pose, but the thumbnail never really points “up” with the other fingernails unless it is bent backwards, as in poses when all five fingers are pressed against a flat surface. It never really points “down” unless the hand is clamping or pinching… or operating a sock puppet.
The thumb has to sit lower than the palm so that it can flex underneath the hand. The first knuckle of the thumb is almost as far below the index finger as the pinky is far away from the index finger.
The “webbing” of the thumb connects exactly half way up the palm.
Hands are asymmetrical from every angle. Every part, every time.
That is all the knowledge I have so far, and now you have it too! I don’t think any tutorial, video or otherwise, can ever teach you as much as the thousand observations you will make from drawing a thousand hands. There is no substitute for practice. So practice by looking at your hand from the normal vantage point, and from a mirror. Practice from 3D reference like the Handy Art Tool. Practice by copying other artists and animators whose hands appeal to you. Most of all, practice from imagination. PRACTICE! Below is every reference that I can remember that I’ve personally used while practicing hands:
http://www.handyarttool.com/
http://youtu.be/BAQb-5VKxmg
http://nk-chan.deviantart.com/art/mini-hand-tutorial-68320552
http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-Reference-321600866
http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-Reference-2-322546252
http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-Reference-3-330102275
http://kibbitzer.deviantart.com/art/Hands-reference-4-428109721
http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/09/hand-reference.html
http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/09/hand-reference-part-two.html
http://characterdesignnotes.blogspot.com/2010/11/hand-reference-part-three.html
Do me a favor and share this around, will you? We could all use more light shed on this subject. -Aaron
think I’ll take a break now from art’ing and brush up on my knowledge of how things work and connect… specially arms… urgh…..
insane. as soon as so woke up… add this dream of art.,.. so obviously I got out my iPad and IMMEDIATELY went to drawing. the bright light of my iPad killed me.
I spent so much time on that face in the last one 😌 I like that time of art moment… just working… looking at refs…. Refining….. 5.39
But…. One thing I’ve been sadly about lately is well…, sIGH…. How I feel like my figures don’t look all that nice…. It’s just kind of disheartening I suppose….. like it’s not bad… at this level… I GUESS…. But I want it to be better…. Ahhhhhh SIGH….. I have to a lot of practice and studies I suppose 😞 but nothing man. I’m getting better at Creating stuff, I think. IDK!!! it’s honestly hard to gauge my progress level. It’s not really a straight line…..
Thanks so much for your ask! I’ve meant to do a tutorial like this for a long time. This is the way that I draw big girls, though it’s quite a short and basic tutorial. I hope it helps!
the “area of gain” part was pretty much taken directly from -here-, a VERY informative and helpful tutorial. Here’s a couple of tutorials that I think are pretty good: link and link.
WHAT A DAY TODAY WAS!!! VERY FULLFIED N HAPPY N PROUD N ALSO MIX OF I WANT TO GET BETTER AHHH….. :’
— I got back into ft and was doodling characters and then had sudden urge to draw a more finished piece… and i decided this time to use a ref. it helped with idea and giving a base base for the male but I didn’t want to copy the pose one to one so I changed stuff and ahaha well. it wasn’t easy. and by god, the LEGS. Legs really a Big Weakness of mine. this one was soooo hard to try to get right. the struggle… at one point I was really just gonna crop to hide the legs but I didn’t want to do that.
— also as you can see from the last and before last pic… I also realised another thing that “felt” off was lol that the entire pic was tilted… another thing I’m realising that I have a problem with my works. I tend to tilt stuff. so something to work on. I feel like there’s some kind of tilt…. still…
— I’m not completely satisfied with the legs and also my god. the arms was very hard too…. :’ BUT MAN. FORGETTING ALL THAT!!!! It’s so. So. Satisfying to look at this omg. I’m sooooo happoyyyy. And can’t believe. I really do want to more finish this piece… I honestly don’t have more finishing pieces which is what I want to have. Like disappointed prev I only have doodles and figure prac stufd to look back at. That’s why I have this goal to do more “bad” finished art. So that I can look back and clearly see my progress also just. There’s this endearness in having seeing your old art that you worked hard one :’
— anyways man after riding this high I needed to create more shit!!!!! so I DID. I had an idea and went right into it:
—and let me tell you, I seriously felt like crying when I drawing the more cleaned up version because my gosh, it’s so so so nice to be able to have this image you want ONTO THE PAPER. it’s something I struggled so hard with and now HERE I AM. oh my godddd. it feels SO FREAKIN NICE. I’m so happyyyy so so happyyy SO UNBELIEVABLY HAPPY :’ :’ :’ this is also another reason I want to create more finished pieces ahhhhhhh
— also lmao I didn’t realize while trying to clean up the initial sketch but oh wow when I utilized the canvas flip, I was like wtf? Why is the drawing so tilted and omg seeing them beside by beside lolololol.
—also initially this one was meant to be a simple character holding umbrella up… but I’ve been watching fixing art videos lately and composition ones and learned some stuff and thought it would be fun to incorporate and oh man it’s been so fun as I builded up the illustration. thinking about the beside it. first I was gonna go with flowers framing but I felt like it was too much circly stuff especially with the umbrella unique shape… so I went with curtain blowing… and ahaha I have this whole cool idea to add in when…
— I realized wtf, curtains aren’t on the outside but inside.., sIGH. I would like to ignore that and continue to draw it but :/ unfortunately I can’t 😭😭😭 it’s gonna BOTHER me. but I think I got an idea to still keep the initial idea. Also I do want to make changes still… the og sketch composition feels so much better with the curtain blowing… also as I was drawing I did realize wtf I don’t know how to draw curtain fabric… so I went hunting for refs and. Ahhh I do really like that part of process — I don’t know. It just feels more fun. Like I feel like a proper artist if that even makes sense…
— in middle of all that, ahahah, I really had this sudden urge to add color and so tried. and yeah, I suck at it but also it did help greatly with the what I felt like clothing lost…. like with the wrinkles/folds 💀💀💀 soooo hard to find any side ref for it I was losttt and I do like what the colour adds even if it’s not the best… there’s a lot to change n add to this piece and I do hope I get around to it…
— also a shame but I feel like with the trying to keep the tilt the right way, I lost some of the dynamicness the og sketch had awww. and honestly cba to try and change stuff around. who knows MAYBE I will get to. but honestly looking back at other wips I have from dec ahahahab. I Doubt it. But whatever.
— and of course after this I wanted to CREAT MORE STUFF!!!! And I did had this idea and well….
ahaha yeah. Didn’t go so well
— the problem was. well. I rushed too fast into it. I mean, yeah. I did have idea in my head into what I wanted but it’s another thing trying to get it onto paper. the last one was diff since it’s a just side pose that I practiced a lot so it wasn’t a struggle to get down. the struggle was mostly the clothes n stuff. but this one is more complicated and I just had a image. I should have sketched out roughly and also considered the hands more. like a issue I noticed I have is that: I think of the one hand that’s doing something but then the other one I have noooo. clue to do with
— anyways after that I just couldn’t bother to proper with this one and left it, like going back to it some other time ahahah.
— next one up 💞💞
—this time I went back to refs, and saw this one and wanted to draw and ahahah I changed it completely. the only thing I took from was the way they were close and the way the guy was grabbing the girls’ face. everything else. real estate world.
— and ngl I was loosing some hope/feeling disappointed n sad around here n frustrated too… like sighhhh I did feel like I forgot shit but I’m realizing now I really didn’t…? More like my structure to starting sucks. The foundation ain’t strong. But I was completely changing the ref and challenging myself, since the ref they were sitting and I struggled with trying to get them to feel they were interacting
— bring the girl closer didn’t really do anything… other than make the pose weirder and I did want to be able to see more of her arm then I had a revelation: what if I made the guys body more side profile. haha I did felt a bit fhdjjdk erasing n changing the position of guy completely but it was kind of fun in a way. made me feel like a real artist heheh heheh. and OH BOY IT MADE THE PIECE SO MUCH !!!!!!! like LOOK!!!! the DIFF!!!!
— it made me get excited for it more…. and lol the legs again… I felt like it would be boring to make it too straight but don’t really know how to make it diff…..
— but anyways right now very happy with how it’s coming along and kinda dreading having to add clothes and do expressions. for the guy anyways. the girl’s expression is already down ahaha…
— as you can see at this point, I didn’t really do at all. or more I didn’t at all do any figure parc and honestly I didn’t even want to…. It pales so much to how much fun this stuff is but I did feel like I needed to get back to it. Cuz my foundation also I need to work on gesture and look at the legs more closely as I draw and the arms too..,,.
— and I did have this new idea for another piece to do and this one will def will be a challenge. but one thing i started to be consciously be aware of even as I was picturing this new idea: is to think of how the other arm would behave and the space and how the characters are turned towards each other and the space they hold…. This one will be quite ambitious since loolol they will be four characters 💀 and HOPEFULLY will add in a background too…. I have some idea in my head about the space n the poses…
— while doing the figure pracs, I did doodle an general idea of how I wanted the first two characters to be interacting and ahahah yeahhh it didn’t come out greatttt. but I thought it would be a lil better than that so it was honestly disappointing but it’s okay…. I can practice also did help to realize to not put a lot of expection into how this turns out but that’s also a kind of struggle since ha….. I already have this nice image in my head 😔😔😔 gonna be so disappointed if comes out So Badly. But also not surprised since after all this is a very ambitious piece for me… ahahah………….
💀 zipping from wow i can’t for shit i’m so sad abt it all look at this and hey okay it wasnt actually so bad and hey it’s looking good and hey doing this constructing step step thing is kinda working out to getting motivated by vids and doing quick poses and oh wow i’m getting hang of it yay to lets goooo and back to wtf i can’t draw shit man i want to cryyyy
jacket/fabric study that i did at the very start of the year turned into a gif bc the material is there already 🙂↕️✌️
trying to actually dissect tension points and movement so i can apply it to jackets from imagination in the future 🥹🥹
productive??? day??? 😳
—I wasn’t gonna do more art…., I was tired but know what I watched some videos and came back to this artist that helped a lot and I think thinking of legs of like wrapping forms… helped instead of drawing the individual parts of leg but just thinking about the two parts wrap… helped… I just wanted to first get down how it was like (and did so initially roughly with finger) and kind of… helped start a figure session getting out the pen
—main things I wanted to keep in mind and think about was wrapping form and the way the body parts (rib waist pelvis) stack on top of each other… im still weak in the area of waist/pelvis but I did like this session. also focused on the hands too like the video helped a lot. like instead of trying to construct the hand with fingers from knuckles but instead… drawing where thumb/index/pinky come out from the hand helps so much more. still need to practice more on that but felt like hands were more easier that way…
—I did get bored of it and wanted to do other stuff and so it came to mind to go to the 🧊 terrible day comic… and yeah I needed to ref back to the manga to see how things looked like (the setting) but honestly I couldn’t bothered so I decided to just focused on the pose that was there and draw it more better(?) and ah…. Problem I had was like I didn’t know how to draw this hunched over position well… with hands in pocket. But one thing I realised was that the head is more lower and the traps/shoulders start to the ear but was just completely lost on how to get the legs right and gave up decided to look at some refs for later lmao.
—and then well I wanted to see how the other pose would fair now… and I think main thing is thinking about how the arms would look like if I a person was tied up like that. like would it be more in or just very close to body but more straight to show that it’s being bound… and then well I did want to scribble in the other panel more but ehhh I think I still need to work on that posing stuffs But yeshhhh.
—and then I went to the hina+boru idea…. I did want to have a specific idea but the posing or whatever I didn’t think of yet so time to scribble in stuffs… the first idea was fine but felt like I didn’t know what to do with boru? so I went with another idea but this time while it was good it didn’t convey what I wanted… I think it’s best that I think of more scenarios of what the vibe is cuz I know what like a “younger mom who isn’t mom yet meets future son” but not like an actual time travel thing but just having them interact…. So I think it’s good to think on it before doing this
—also it was kinda fun to just scribble in stuff… and not mattering how it looks just getting in the pose and stuff… and mannnnn trying to get posing of legs was hard once again. I lol haven’t spent time on them so that makes sense but still 💀💀💀
—also it was a bit trying to figure out the proportions of 🔩 and I think I made him more childlike than I wanted in the second pose idea….? But well. At least it’s a cute image to try to try and draw properly later (by later I mean sometime in the long future lol) even if it’s not wanting I was going for.
—okay after that I was still wanting to sketch in character ideas and this one came to mind…. Originally it was a comic idea but my gosh while I do have all of the comic kinda scrippted out in my notes I could not be asked to do all of that. so I focused on the part that was the intial idea anyways and what the comic was born from.
—tried to get the feel of what I wanted and it was mostly trying to get closeness of him leaning over 🦋and was a bit lost on the arms since they aren’t an important part of the scene so I tried to for mitsu… get like something where it feels like he’s leaning over so his arms would probs in that direction to balance and for her it was hard cuz ha….. i had no idea what to do with her arms? I knew they were eating… ahhh I got already an idea for his arms(1.37) since they were eating maybe it’s already on the table… I think it would help to get an image of what they’re already doing like in scene which helps in knowing what the arm are doing before he leans over
—i think the direction of her face feels off but something to work on along with perspective too.
—it felt really nice when I added in more details to the scene to feel like they are in a scene and I think I might scrapped the comic idea after all. since it was never intially meant to be a comic and I think it’s unnecessary…? If I wanted more scene I think I can have be more loose… instead of establishing an entire moment with having lol panels of them just in the burger place. too much trouble and not interested in doing so right now
—also tried to add in the other characters that would be in the scene (which I think might be playing games) but ehhhh I think they should be probs more overlapping? Them? And the perspective on them… I thought that you’d see more of their hands so more of looking down so I probs need to fit the 🦋🐍 to fit it more… but also I don’t think the other characters matter so I think it would be fun to a composition where the other characters are completely in foreground so you can only see their large arm or whatever and in between that you can see 🦋🐍 … I think that would be fun to try…! 1.42
—I did want to do more character posing stuff/ideas but too tired for that and ahhh really want to try colouring and the whole ⏳thing back again (might just make a bday illustration then thinking about pose) (since it’s what shit… tmmr. lol) also want to drawwwww ss + skkr since i saw this art that GOT ME REALLY EXCITED also made me think ahh… I do want to draw skkr more like her canon design but not like completely? like that’s the vibe I want. and also I want to try colouring her hair and the pink right now. but that’s for later if I get around to doing it.
but mainly im really happy i got to sketching/doodling some character stuff since that’s WHAT I WANT…!!!!! YES!!!!! 1.45
—3.13 im really supposed to be sleeping and want to sleep… but also I can’t be bothered to and watched some waist videos and found this leg video that looks good but don’t have attention span for it so I think I will watch it later… but I think I’ve got? A sort of idea to tackle waist stuff but also too tired right now to try and draw stuff… or more like I don’t have energy to get up and draw lol
—yeah I didn’t do any of that. I went offff and well then the time came to be like evening when I realised I haven’t done any more art stuff and was like right okay I don’t think there’s any more for today but then…!!!! while lookin at fanart stuff on x…!!!! I got sudden urge to prac…figure….!! I wanted to get better<333 but I just couldn’t be bothered to do…. but then when I got this idea while browsing through the 🔥🔵 discord… and I just wanted to draw…?! and heh thankfully as soon as i opened procreate, what I saw was the figure session I left on… heh… so I just thought might as well get some figure practice in first…!
—one thing to say is that wow… I can really feel my improvement. to be able to see a pose and then draw in diff way.. trying to make it more dynamic…. just…!!! yo!!!! and also to see how I did balance wrong first and to be able to fix it…!!!!!! im so improving heh.
—saw this other pose I thought was interesting and by interesting hard too lmao. I think I got that the neck was important point… and I just the legs??? yeahhh. Also I thought I got the way the pose felt more relaxed in the ref…. I should get back to this one to study later day….
—and lol as usual me telling my self to prac arms 😔😔😔 i did do some lil hand studies in the corner…. and have to say they don’t look completely so that’s a win in my books. I was following this tip I saw in a video to draw the outer most fingers first (thumb, index, pinky) and like it def helped a lot with spacing but much need to work on, still ahaha.
—and then hehehe for the highlight of the day…!!!!! man I had this idea for it and went to doodling immediately for the pose and yeah I wasn’t at all satisfied of how it was and kinda did an adjustment seeing if it was because they weren’t closer and I think it still felt off…? and so I looked the mental image that I had and I realised ah. well. it’s cuz the one in my mind is so much more dynamic and fun and focuses on 🦩’s face rather then the actually pulling. so. then it did help pausing down and jotting down stuff to more better actualise stuff (also trying to draw the arm coming from neko’s shoulder back view was so???? also I did have a plan on having two panel thingy where I do a reveal of neko’s face so I thought it would make sense for this to have back view of his head.
—and so this time..!!!!! yes it came out soooo much better as you can the third attempt. also this time I realised while drawing that it would be better to not have the arms as the focal point but it’s actually 🦩’s face…!!!!! and I wanted some pull/push action like it looks like he’s actuallyyyy reeling him in you know and I think having the hands there is good decision for that. and I don’t know if I was gonna have legs in there at first but I think it adds to it…!!! also ahahah tried to make it look like one of his legs were going backwards like he’s actually pulling him in. many thanks to saito-sensei in that one correction video that helped so much ahahahh. but I did feel like something was still off
—so i made another adjustment of trying to bring Neko closer and hey!!! I think that made it feel much better. also before i forget to mention when initially redrawing the pose and doing second attempt for dynamic stuff… i had the arms much lower intially…!
—as you can see the first version was sooo much lower and I was like yeah no that wouldn’t work and did it higher and ahahahah in final version it got to be around 🦩’s ear since I felt like it best pushed the action of pulling. (And lol in my other adjustments, I made it even more)
—alright while I was happy with this final-ish version hmmm. I thought maybe it would be better to have neko be more 3/4 back view and tbh yeah I didn’t really know what I was doing here but I went to diff page and tried to redraw over it since it was soooo difficult trying to erase and get that more 3/4 view and it just wasn’t working cuz I realised it wouldn’t make sense either???? I’d have to change 🦩’s pose too??? I think??? Anyways instead it just turned into a redraw cleaner version…? Of the pose and yeah I didn’t like it at first since with the redraw I kinda just did the overall silhouette which made it flatter
—but I did do adjustments to neko’s other arm. making more out there so it adds to more of the fluid gesture and ah I think the reason the overall body felt flat was because it does straight…? and so like I made his legs more out so it looks like he’s being pulled it. and I think I did it? also tried to draw in the back a bit but my gosh do I need more practice with that stuff kinda treading adding in clothes over back… hmmm… I need to practice some more hahaha. backs are HARD!
—anyways there was lil time of day left so I thought to get in the other part of the idea in… and wellllll. Last one is the more finalised version. Had the idea of having neko’s reaction and intially trying to draw pose from diff angle is harddd but I think the way I approached it was like not the best? I just went to drawing it starting from his face and was terrible decision since I was like ??? and yeah it was def all falling apart but i still kept on scribbling it in just wanting to get the overall down. and i do think it’s funny seeing it in comparison to the other version lmaooo. like???? what is even happening in the pose. trying to draw from diff angle is hard and even more especially when you don’t visualise stuff properly and just go straight into it especially LOL when this is a character interaction pose honestly.
—also lol i did have lil character more expression face but deleted it cuz i was just????? on how to do the pose from diff angle i probs should have realised here that starting from face was terrible idea ahaha. but overall heheh best way to end day. I felt soooo accomplished n nice heheheh.
I need for the next month… gonna take a long break… since ahhh my hand is aching… and I was wondering… why… and while on working on my piece… I realised… ah that’s where I press my pen into….
ahhh feeling much better now…. i approached these drawings wrongly.ll i went straight to it, without any warm ups and or going slow and doing proper construction ahaha…l no wonder it fell apart.
Ah fck this.,, art is so hard.,,, it’s so frustrating :’ like I wanted to create some fanart for my ship and it was sooo hard……… I can’t even…,. There’s so much in realising I have to learn ahahah….. (sob) oh man. This shit is so hard n annoying. The frustration I felt while attempting too…. :’ I wanted to give up so badly aahahha.