How to Draw Hands

How to Draw Hands

Drawing hands is a daunting task for a lot of artists, regardless of skill level or experience. Beginners and professionals alike struggle, and some avoid it entirely to preserve the “correctness” of their artwork by hiding hands in pockets or behind backs. But hands are not as intimidating as they seem. In this article, I will provide tutorials for hand anatomy, posing, and color; everything you need to become more confident in drawing hands.

Every bone in the hand serves a purpose in providing structure, stability, and movement. When drawing hands, your focus will mostly be on the finger bones (phalanges). Fingers are responsible for most of the expression, posing, and stylization.

Notice the number of joints in the fingers. The pointer, middle, ring, and little finger all have three, making them longer and thinner. But the thumb only has two and is shorter and thicker. This way, it enables us to grab things more easily. Unlike the other fingers, the metacarpal attached to the thumb has a much wider range of movement, almost like it is separate from the others. Each finger but the thumb can bend at the knuckle (which is where it connects to the metacarpal bones), the middle, and the tip. The thumb, on the other hand, only bends at the metacarpal and tip.

Metacarpal bones are the next important aspect to consider when drawing hands. They form the structure of your palm and the back of your hand. The concave form of the palm and lines following the knuckles on the back of the hand are all metacarpals!

The last thing to note is that the wrist bones protrude slightly, which can be more or less visible depending on the thickness of the forearm and wrist. The ulna will be more prominent typically, with the look and feel of a small ball on the left side of the back of the wrist.

Splitting the hand into simple shapes allows you to focus first on the gesture and pose of the hand and can help make it look much more natural.

Drawing the gesture of the hand should look loose and messy. At this stage, the anatomy of the hand should not be considered yet. Fixating too much on anatomy at the early stage is often why artists find their hands looking “awkward” and “off-putting.”

Gesture drawing for hands can also be called “mitten hands” because you’ll group the fingers together in one shape rather than drawing them individually.

Once the gesture is complete, simple shapes can be drawn in to start defining the structure and pose of the hand. Rectangles are helpful for defining the shape of the hand, fingers, and forearm, while circles help with the movement of the wrist and the ball of the hand, where the thumb connects to the hand.

Anatomy and details should be considered only once you’re confident in the gesture and shapes of the hand. This is where you apply bone structure and the separation between joints, etc.

Below are more examples of this process.

A good practice or warm up is to draw a bunch of loose hand gestures, not focusing on any kind of anatomical accuracy, only on the very basic forms. Try out some references or simply hold out your hand in front of you to see how it naturally moves!

A common mistake is drawing fists with each finger at the same height. But hands have a downward slope, starting high at the pointer finger and ending low at the pinky. This slope is noticeable in a closed fist as well. The slope will be present at the middle joints of the fingers, or if drawing from a head-on perspective, from the knuckles.

The same rule applies to drawing hands holding onto something, specifically a cylindrical object like sword, hilt, or spear. When holding onto something with a closed fist, the fingers will slope downwards. It’s helpful to begin the drawing with the object, and then place the hand around it afterwards. This way, you can avoid issues with perspective and proportion that often come with trying to fit an object into the hand.

Hands can be a lot to look at, and it’s difficult to consider every little detail. But you don’t have to draw every fold and wrinkle, especially if realism is not your goal. You can omit a lot of the details and still end up with a hand that looks professionally drawn.

The general idea of simplification is to include only the most important, identifiable features. For hands, those would be the gesture and shape. As long as you can portray the movement, posing, and shape of hand, the rest of the details are up to you.

In this example, the reference’s hands have been stripped of all detail, and only the basic information remains: pose and shape. Even with barely more than simple outlines, we can still see the movement of the fingers and wrist.

When coloring hands, it’s important to remember that the skin on your hand is much thinner than the skin on your leg or arm. This means that the blood is more visible, resulting in a warmer hue. To convey this in art, add a blush effect to places like the tips of fingers, knuckles, and ball of the hand, as these are the areas where the skin is stretched tighter.

Another aspect to consider is palm color among skin tones. The palm is always going to be a lighter color than the rest of the hand, because the skin here is thicker, and lacks the same melanin production as the rest of the body. The bottoms of feet are the same.

This is less noticeable in those with lighter skin, but it becomes more noticeable in darker skin tones with more melanin.

Finally, here are some resources to help you practice drawing hands.

Line of Action is a website with a massive collection of free-to-use reference images. This is a great resource for practice sessions or finding specific references.

Sketchfab is a website with a massive collection of free 3D models. There are 3D references for almost anything, including many hand models in different poses and lighting.