If you hide your hands behind your characters every time, this tutorial is for you!

I’ll try my best to explain how to get comfortable at drawing hands so here we go!

Hand anatomy!

First, we will talk about the basic anatomy of hands without making it too complicated.

The Height of the fingers is equal to the height of the palm and width of the hand.

The knuckles follows the angle of the arc of the fingers while the last joint of the thumb lines up with the first knuckle of the hand.

The fat pad on the front of the hand goes above the knuckles back, making the hand appear shorter on the palm side.

The 3 raised chubby pads on the palm create an indication in the shape of the triangle in the center of the palm.

The pads make the hands more voluptuous and less blocky, as you can observe; most people’s hands aren’t blocks and are curvy.

As said previously ;The Height of the fingers is equal to the height of the palm and width of the hand, but the thumb reaches just above the base of the fingers when lying FLAT.

Since the bones are close to the surface they usually will make sharp angles around the knuckles.

The hand is usually bony on top but gets soft and meaty underneath where the palm and finger are.

Also in between each finger there is a “U” shape more than a “V” shape.

You can start simplifying the hand into easier shapes. For the palm you can start with a box.

The thumb pokes out from a triangular insertion at the side of the palm.

You can also start putting guidelines for the fingers such as ellipses at the edge of the palm where the fingers are attached.

Start by blocking a box that will be the body of the hand, add guidelines for the finger which are cylinders that wedge into the body of the hand.

For the thumb; The thumb is attached to the body of the hand and pivots around it, though it’s not all the way flexible, the thumb can’t go all the way behind the back of the hand for example so try to think of it as a limited extension of the hand’s body.

Fingers

You can simplify the fingers into a basic shape like a cylinder or a hotdog!

By simplifying it into this simple shape, it’s easier to draw it in perspective.

Fingers are built with three phalangeal bones that allows the fingers to bend.

These three major sections are around the same size each but it can change from finger to finger and depends on the person’s hand shape.

Usually though, the section towards the palm is longer and it gets shorter going up.

The three joints connect the sections together and the bottom joint is the joint attached to the knuckle.

A finger is flat over the top and round on the bottom

Though a real finger is almost never absolutely flat, the knuckles will bring a sharp bump on top which will appear bony. They can be more plump and less visible on someone who has chubby fingers though.

You can start by sketching the body of the hand and draw the fingers as simple wire frames. Then you can start drawing cylinders around them to flesh out the form. Don’t forget that extended fingers move only on the X and Y axis .

As you can see the fingers can’t rotate all the way but the tips of the fingers curve inwards a little when bent. You can notice that no matter the pose the fingers will arc.

You can exchange the cylinders with boxes as well of it’s more comfortable, either way it’s correct but this way might come out making more strong or rigid hands while cylinders more flexible and plump fingers.

It’s very useful to practice hand by simplifying it in basic shapes, it makes it seem easier to understand its anatomy.

When drawing a hand holding something the arc of the fingers won’t be straight.

I recommend to first draw the object that will be held if it’s a big object ( like a weapon, a small object like a glass can be added after) that way you can draw the hands around the weapon and not the opposite.

The best option is to look at references. If your character is holding something think of how each individual finger will wrap around it and how the height of each finger matters too.

Hand sinew

The hand have sinews that can be seen when you raise a finger or simply when you use the muscles of your hand.

There is a sinew for every finger, it’s one of the details that can make your hands look more realistic because usually the sinews show even with the most simple movements you make with your hands.

Foreshortening

Once again the key to being comfortable drawing poses in foreshortening is breaking down the body of the hand into simple shapes

Imagine the fingers as jointed tubes or boxes may help you visualize the hand popping out towards you.

Break up the lines into skin wrinkles to showcase the curvy shapes of the hand, emphasize the sharpness of the knuckles and add nails to indicate the curvature f the volume.

When the fingers are flexing upwards, the sinews will make the knuckles appear flatter.

Difference in hands

Now you can apply all those principles to make different types of hands, chubby, slender or strong.

You can look around and see that most people around you have different shapes of hands. Because as said previously it differs depending on the individual.

Some people make have larger of flatter hands. Slender hands look much more bony since the skin is tight around the bones for example. You can use these differences to match the hands to your characters whetter the character is human or not.

Hands also change with age;

Babies have soft round small hands while if you’re drawing an old person’s hands they will have way more wrinkles and the skin will be more saggy.

Gesture drawing

Don’t feel afraid to draw hands and start with a loose sketch of what a hand roughly looks like.

If you’re drawing a character, you don’t need to detail the hands right away. It’s better to have an approximately correct hand and detail it later on.

Just don’t over complicate your sketch of the hand because you can refine it later.

I used to overthink my hands drawing until i realized the hands can be cleaned way later into the process!

Using 3D

Tou can always use 3D if you’re having a hard time drawing a specific hand pose! Just trace over the model.

All you have to do is drag and drop the hand pose onto your 3D model! You can find plenty different poses in the assets.

It’s now also possible to use the 3D hand scanner if you have a camera on the device you’re using to draw. It will track in real time the pose you make with your hand and apply it to the 3D model!

Rendering

Hands are pretty easy to render if you follow the simple shapes!

Start with a rough sketch, once again see how you can break the fingers down into easier shapes.

Apply the basic colors, apply some sort of blush where the knuckles and fingers end as these areas tend to be darker or more pigmented on our hands.

Decide where you light source is coming from and then block the shadows with the multiply mode, make sure to indicate the curve of the hands with your shadows.

Don’t forget to make the fingernails lighter. People with dark skin also tend to have their palm lighter than the back of their hand, you can lighten the palm with a lighten or add glow mode.

Refine the shadows, colorize the line-art and add highlights on the finger and you’re done!

Again, start with a sketch then a line-art and base color.

I’ll make the edges of the shadow that are closer to the light source more saturated to add contrast

And finally with glow dodge and / or lighten mode i will add the rim light to give ore contrast and make the image pop more, i also changed the line art color to make it more natural.

You can repeat this by blocking the shadows before adding the base colors as well, this can be great to have a better idea of what it’ll look like finished and help you see clearly where you wanna guide your painting.

Again make the shadow’s edges saturated while the darkest part of the shadows will be a desaturated blue as if the character is outside on a sunny day.

Thank you for reading!

That’s all! Hope i could help you with drawing hands!

If you want to see more of my art here’s my instagram account;

See you next Time!