Drawing Hands: Tips and Resources

Drawing hands is something every artist struggles with at some point. Through lots of practice and experimentation most artists end up creating their own synthesized method of drawing hands for their work. Using tips and resources like the ones provided below by magnificent artists you too can develop your skills and create fantastic, dynamic hands for your illustrations.

Here are some tips and resources to keep in mind as you learn to draw hands

We'll start with a beginner friendly tutorial from the educational artist Marc Brunet. Marc teaches us how to easily draw hands in a simple style for things like cartoons and then explains another method for constructing more complicated hand shapes as your skills continue to grow. This tutorial is the perfect place to begin because each aspect of the guide will help you understand where to place your lines and how to start drawing hands more confidently.

As you continue drawing these quick anatomy tips from the artist Sinix Design will help you "fall in love" with the process of drawing hands. This video tutorial provides essential tips for breaking down the structure of the hand and translating the anatomy into different shapes. Through each segment you will pick up helpful advice that will make it much easier to draw dynamic and anatomically accurate hands.

The last three fingers can be thought of as a single form as we discover from this guide created by qinniart and posted by the Etherington Brothers. Keeping this tip in mind as demonstrated in the examples below will make it much easier to sketch hands in different poses for your illustrations. You can then use the natural shading of the hand forms you draw to render depth and shadow.

Use references to understand the shapes of the hand. This example by artist mobiusluverr3000 highlights the importance of using references and gives us some tips for how to break down shapes and hand anatomy. In their response to a follower's question the artist explains that they observed a lot about hands and how they move in order to develop these tips. These tips are also really helpful when blocking out hands in your sketches.

Using anatomy knowledge you can experiment with hand poses to add more character to an illustration. This example in the tutorial thread below by artist Dreamkeepers demonstrates how to show personality and character through a variety of hand poses. In the second slide of the last tweet the artist shows examples of variation in style when drawing hands. This skill is essential for trying out a mixture of animated art styles.

A strong sense of anatomy will also allow you to stylize your hands for cartoons and comics. This video by Proko breaks down some popular styles of hands in cartoons and shows us how to use our sense of anatomy and form to draw them. Proko does a great job of explaining important details, like the reason why Mickey has only four fingers, and then demonstrates how to think the same way when creating your own cartoon art. The artist also applies this logic to comic book art styles toward the end of the video.

Finally take a look at this fantastic tutorial video from Rapidfireart. This video will walk you through the process of creating a hand from scratch. The artist easily explains how to construct hands and gives tips like using a pencil and your finger to measure the segments of the hand while encouraging anyone following along to pause and practice doing so at each step. The video then explains how to draw and shade different styles of hands in great detail.

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