Tips on drawing hands 😎

[BellaTheCow]

Hi everyone! I was just wondering if y’all were able to share some of your methods for drawing hands. Since this is one of the most expressive parts of the body to draw, I thought it pivotal to learn more about drawing them. Thank you to all who take the time to read and share any information on this. ️

[vapidink]

Hands are tough but at least we always have a refence on hand.

I'll show myself out

Anyway, the best thing you can do is just practice lots. Using your hand as a reference is probably the best way to try different angles, just start by breaking things down. Here's some of my own hand studies. I went back and lowered the opacity of one of the layers so you can see how I outline things before doing a more detailed sketch over it.

[jwabeasley]

Well I'm hardly the expert, but here are some tips I always use:

1. Always get a hand reference. I use 3d models for distant hands and photos for closeups.
2. Remember that the hand is part of character design - a character with large rough hands must be drawn differently than a character with dainty soft ones. There are all kinds of hands - stubby splayed ones, long elegant ones, grippy awkward ones, and so forth. If you're working from photo reference this adjustment is critical. I remember a scene in an indie game once where the hand was supposed to be that of a 9-10 year old boy, and they showed a drawing of an obvious adult woman's hand. It cracked me up.
3. Pay attention to how the hand interacts with the line of action in a frame. Hands and arms have an unusually strong influence on the overall composition, almost as much as faces. I try to make them parallel or perpendicular to the line of action if I can.
   
   

[DokiDokiTsuna]

As someone who loves drawing hands and has spoken about it often on this forum, I'm gonna just consolidate all my greatest hits into one "Hand Tutorial Master-Post":

First, a (surprisingly decent??) tutorial I made when I was just a kid:

Second, a thread I started where I made another tutorial (focusing more on posing and palm structure), and others shared plenty of their own advice:
https://forums.tapas.io/t/tough-stuff-hands/53162/1

Finally, a piece of advice I gave for the more-advanced artists who know how to draw hands but want to get better at it:

Drawing hands TT

I would recommend trying at least one of two methods for study/practice: breaking the hand down into simple shapes (the usual) OR figuring out the general overall shape of the hand.

Knowing which one your artist brain gravitates to will be important for learning in the long run. If your brain prefers overall shapes but you keep feeding it structural breakdowns, you're gonna end up with a lot of stiff, lifeless, ugly-lookin hands.And if your brain prefers structure and you feed it vague sketches, you'll just end up frustrating yourself and feeling lost whenever you need to do a new pose/gesture.

I prefer overall shapes personally, and I grew up drawing hands kinda however I saw 'em. Then I took time out to study their structure with the polygons and all that for a couple years, but after that (when I realized which technique I actually liked better) I went back to focusing on overall shapes, and now I get consistently better hands.Both techniques were important to learn: my structural knowledge feeds the detail of the overall shapes. But you have to know which one to focus on to get the best result in the end. Some people do great with the polygons all their lives, some people need to let them go at some point in order to get the most out of the skill they've acquired.

[BoomerZ]

The secret to drawing good hands, in comics, is to have a dozen or so types of hands you know how to draw and use them over and over. Jim lee, McFarlane, Ditko... all of them have a couple hands they repeat over and over. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel on every panel. Try to keep hands from awkward positions that even if you draw it correctly, it "looks" wrong. And there are lots of those. We are not drawing fine art, we are drawing comics.

To learn how to draw body parts, life drawing is the way to go. Don't copy other artist, specially at first. That will just copy their mistakes (commonly know as their style.) You really don't need to know anatomy, just where things show through the skin. I learned anatomy in art school and i find it a waste of time. You just need to know the basics to get by.

[BellaTheCow]

@vapidink OMG thank you so much for these references, it’ll help me practice so much more. And thanks for the tips they are much appreciated

Edit: lol at the pun 🤣

[BellaTheCow]

Wow yeah these are also really great tips, I actually did not think about how the line of action would affect the overall composition, I’ll definitely take that into account when drawing. Tthe second tip mentioned is very helpful as well, I can see how that would definitely conflict with the composition of the panel (and also make for great laughs). thank you a lot for taking the time and sharing @jwabeasley

[BellaTheCow]

This REALLY helped me @DokiDokiTsuna I can’t thank you enough, I’ve been struggling particularly with the palm (fingers I’ve definitely gotten the hang of) and how to attach the fingers onto the palm. These tutorials are amazing. Thank you!

[BellaTheCow]

I see, thank you for your input @BoomerZ this will help me as I get to drawing more of my comics, especially with any added time constraints.

Also I totally agree with what you said about other parts of the body (such as and especially the arms and legs [speaking from experience]), unless a more cartoon style is what you’re going for I think real life references are better for this.

[thepenmonster]

I decided to follow the "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck" philosophy when it comes to drawing hands a few years ago. If I'm drawing something meant to be more realistic I'll use a reference. But I'm no longer going to sweat over a wonky finger.

[heyroxi]

LOL I hide mine. I learned to use 3D reference as well then use the filled-brush method. Basically, just shape the gesture you want before lining the skecth I hope that makes sense. I am still trying to practice it, though.

[Lensing]

I follow the big to small principle.
First draw one big and easy shape and then take it from
there and decide if I need more details.

For hands this means that I draw one of those gloves without
seperated fingers. I do that when I draw from memory or from
reference. Then I decide if want to add the fingers or not.
When I work from reference I would check if I have the
basic shape correct and then go to the next step.

[lizardlullabye]

I normally draw hands as "claws" or "mittens".

However, for breaking down shapes from real-life references -- I "sometimes" split things at the joints (usually ball-and-socket or hinge b/c easy to understand although it's actually much more complex):

• Palm -- where hand starts from forearm, connected to wrist. Pops out from wrist so there's a place to hold stuff like an orange or a cookie.
• Finger -- mittens with lines. May possibly split into separate fingers or bend each finger into 3 segments as needed.
• Thumb is on one side -- different for left and right hand. Check with your own hands for reference.

[BellaTheCow]

Aww! I love the cute style of these hands, I’ll study this for my comic TFF (The Farmyard Funnies) @lizardlullabye Thank you sooo much for the info!

[BellaTheCow]

Ooh ok I think I’ll try this method out, it looks very promising. Thanks! @Lensing

@heyroxi yeah I usually hide the hands too, but I’ve kinda had enough of that cause a lot of my sketches are often missing that dynamic if it’s an action scene. In other words, thought I should face this challenge head on, but I still needed a hand (sorry had too 🤣) in getting started. A lot of people suggest 3d models as you have, I haven’t used many of those so I’ll give it a go, it’ll probably be a helpful resource for posed and training. Tysm! ️

[skullforceagents]

Ah hands! The beginner’s biggest obstacle. Here’s what I’ll recommend.

Understanding the hands:

there are two things you need to understand about hands while you draw them. First is that hands are 3D shapes and you need to think about all the planes of the hands while you draw them. Practicing contour drawing and shaping out a “Tron grid” over the hands helps to understand how they work as 3D shapes from the many different angles you will see them from.

The second thing you need to understand is how hands are dependent on other parts of the body. The hands are connected to the wrist, which is connected to the radius and ulna etc etc. when these bones move, so do the bones and tissue of the hands which effects their shape.

If you’re looking to fundamentally improve this, the ol saying of practice practice will be the best way to improve.

What I do:

I’ve learned to draw, and I could spend hours putting together poses, but I prefer to set up my poses in Magic Poser. I will confess that I trace the outlines from the application in order to save time planning out my drawings. You can do that too if you need a shortcut that will allow you to retain your penmanship. I wouldn’t use it as a replacement for training, but when you feel you have the drawing fundamentals ingrained in your brain, it saves a lot of time drawing hands, plus everything else.

You can see some of the hands I’ve drawn with my characters in this picture.

Hope this helps

[Azifri]

Tutorials are fine, but if you want to improve on the expression and movement, I recommend drawing from life. I used to do tutorials and use references, but it wasn't until I started doodling people whenever I got a chance (on the train, bus, park, etc) that it finally clicked and became something I don't have to put much thought into.

[NickRowler]

The thing that got me better at drawing hands was to stop seeing them as hands.

I think what people struggle with is they have a hard time forming each finger. But when you are drawing a comic, you can't hyperfocus on small fingers. Instead, think of a hand as a shape, similar to a crumpled up wad of paper. Similar to drawing a wad, your focus should be where the lines are.

[kyupol]

I used my own hands as reference. But had slight struggle making them look female.

[RED-VELVET-CUPCAKE]

Here is one reference I stumbled upon a while ago. I like how they have different hand shapes for different characters.

It was made for the animated show Far-Fetched!