Intro

Drawing hands is perhaps one of the most complicated tests to face, and we often end up not drawing them at all to avoid making mistakes. But in reality, hands are a fundamental element, they characterize our character and can give meaning to an entire scene, because as with the face they are probably the most expressive element of the human body.

So let's try to understand how to simplify the process of drawing hands, drawing simple structures, understanding what mistakes to avoid and what features to enhance.

 

 

GENERAL HAND STRUCTURE AND PROPORTIONS

First let us see how the hand is structured. What we need to know is that we can, mentally, divide the hand into three parts, which will be the palm of the hand, the thumb and the muscle that regulates its movement, and the other fingers.

As we see from the drawing, the palm of the hand will be the same length as the overall length of the fingers, while the thumb will be the same length as its distance from the wrist.

As for the position of the fingers ( index, middle, ring and little fingers), they will be found connected to the palm in a fan-like structure, which can be constructed with curved lines and which, as we see from the drawing, also helps us to indicate the points at which the fingers may bend, that is the joints of the phalanges of the fingers.

 

 

Looking at the hand from the back we can see the structure of the tendons that connect from the wrist to the fingers. These tendons are not parallel to each other, but branch from the wrist to the fingers. The muscle attached to the thumb and the muscle attached to the little finger, meet in the center of the palm dividing it in half, while the portion of the palm closest to the fingers, will be one third of the total length of the palm.

Wrist Movement

Before continuing with the structure of the fingers, let us look for a moment at the movement of the wrist, which will be the part that binds the hand to the forearm. The wrist can be imagined as a band that, as we see from the drawing, allows the hand to move laterally and forward and backward. One feature to note is that the ability of the hand to tilt toward the direction of the thumb is less than toward the direction of the little finger.

 

 

FINGER STRUCTURE

The fingers of the hand are divided into three phalanges, except for the thumb, which has only two. When we have to draw bending fingers, a good method is to imagine, especially at the first joint of the fingers, as if there were a sphere, in fact when the fingers bend, they form more skin folds at that point.

Remember, the first phalanx of the fingers is located inside the palm of the hand, so if we bend the fingers fully forward, part of the palm will also bend with them, defining the knuckles on the back of the hand. The knuckles are not all the same shape as you see from the drawing, and with the exception of the knuckles of the index finger and middle finger, which are parallel, the upper two move downward.

As we mentioned earlier, the palm of the hand consists of two main muscles (formed in turn by groupings of other muscle fibers). One of these is the little finger muscle and the other is the thumb muscle. The thumb muscle has a great capacity for movement, making the thumb opposable to the other fingers, and as we see from the drawing the three main movements of this muscle make it so that the thumb can move away from the rest of the hand, it can move closer to the hand, or it can move in front of the palm of the hand.

All fingers can bend and will all move toward the center of the palm. The fingers of the hand cannot rotate on themselves, which is why it is not possible to have the fingertips of the fingers touch each other, obviously with the exception of the thumb.

 

 

The last phalanx of the thumb has a wide mobility in fact it can bend both forward and backward. The thumb muscles can move this away from the hand but there is a limit to their mobility. Going to observe instead how the other fingers bend we will see that in bending we define the joints of the phalanges which will be visible as humps, and in bending completely back on itself the finger will form an acute angle, because the length of the phalanges is different from each other. Know that the nails are half the length of the last phalanx of the fingers.

GENERAL APPEARANCE OF HANDS AND INTERACTION WITH OBJECTS

Generally the hands are not always outstretched and with stiff fingers, they are rather in a relaxed position, the fingers therefore slightly curved. To draw this feature you can imagine the structure of the fingers as a very elastic fan. You can then draw the curve of the base of the fingers and the curve of the tips, going on to define the fingers following what we saw earlier about the way they bend.

When we want to draw a hand interacting with an object, the fingers are the key part to consider. If these are all curved over the object, we will have the impression of a firm, rigid grip, while we can make the grip softer by just going to rest the fingers on the object or by lifting some fingers slightly.

The same thing applies to objects with more complex shapes; the concept will not change completely.

 

 

Outro

Hands are undoubtedly one of the most complex parts to draw, because they are full of details and, as we said before, very expressive, but it is precisely this characteristic that makes them fascinating and can help us to enhance one of our drawings so much.

The most important advice is to practice a lot and experiment as much as possible. Remember, hands are the physical means by which we can interact with the world around us, and it is thanks to them that we can make our drawings.