Why are hands frickin' hard to draw?

[keac]

I should type at least 20 characters to make a content. Yeah... there you go...

[hushicho]

I think it's usually the complexity, since it's a relatively small part of the body but has digits and a certain way it goes together!

I did an instructional video by request, so I hope it'll help you too! It was just a quickie video, but I've heard kind words from friends it's helped.

Just remember: you probably have hands, so you can always use yourself as a reference!

[AnnaLandin]

Because they are weird, multi-jointed, spidery things at the end of your arms that have developed through evolutionary selection to be highly articulated appendages allowing you to manipulate delicate and complex mechanism and interact with the world around you.

Like, arms and legs are basically cylinders with a bit of padding on them. Hands? Hands are multiple joints per finger, the center of your hand isn't a flat, inflexible piece of bone - it's actually loads of bones and sinew and nerves and stuff, and flexing one part of it affects the shape and positioning of all of the other parts as well.

Using your own hands as reference is a good idea - they are (excuse the pun) always on hand.

.... unless of course you, like me, have hyperflexible fingers that bend in weird, spider-like shapes that just doesn't look healthy. >.<

[spooktacularprize]

This is a really common problem for people; ditto at the complexity of the multiple joints..if they don't line up in perspective, length, etc, they will look strange.

I had a friend who is a really good artist but he used to not even draw hands on his sketches, he hated them that much.

My only possible saving grace is my preference for toony-ness in the comic I'm currently working on.

[tayo_rafferty]

When I draw hands I focus on getting the main part of the hand looking right and then the fingers just seem to naturally protrude from it. Try drawing your own hand in multiple poses to get use to how they work and look.

[Shanny8]

Lol...

[shazzbaa]

I think there's also the fact that we see hands all the time, so our brains have a really good idea of what they look like. Feet are also weird and hard to get right, but if you draw feet that are kinda close to how feet look, it won't look distracting. Meanwhile if you make some small error like draw the thumb joint too close to the other joints, a hand immediately looks very wrong.

[indagold]

They're easy... but feet... kill me.

[punkarsenic]

besides being complex structures that are really mobile - they dont just go that way or this way, they bend and twist in so many directions its hard to keep track of the right movements - its also that we see them all the damn time. so were more sensitive to anatomical errors in hands.

the silver lining to this is that satisfying feeling you get at drawing a good hand. even seeing a really well drawn hand is just kind of pleasing, because theyre so often noticeably wrong.

[navyzerimar]

After some practice I got better at drawing them hands... but yea, they are a bitch

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

I know how hard hands are. Basically, I learned from watching artists I like drawing hands and picked it up from there. But, if you want practice I recommend sites like Pixelovely to practice gesture-drawing hands. That site has a lot of tools that can help you! I used it a lot when I was learning anatomy and sometimes still use it if I feel like my skills are getting weak. Best part is that it's all free!

[SirHellsir]

because they are completely asimetrical. Have 5 fingers, and each of them has different lenght and folds differently. And more importatly, the hand is such a small part of the body, that it doesn't feel as rewarding as the effort put in drawing it.
But eventually it stops been so difficult to draw. I start with a square in perspective and a line for each finger, just to make sure it looks natural, them proceed to ad the "mass" (the 3d shape over the structure)

[arbanims]

Becasue you haven't drawn them enough. Anything can be considered hard unless you practice it.

[WakaXO]

Hands are hard to draw its true, but they are like anything else, the more you draw them the easier they are to draw. Learn to break them down into their simplest shapes, learn their structure (muscles, bones, etc), use references, and draw them from many different angles. Time and effort are the only way to make them easy to draw.