Intro:

Drawing the hands are often considered the hardest part in illustration but it doesn't need to be like that; Drawing hands can be one of the most fascinating part of illustration if done correctly. Hi, my name is Saif an illustrator and a character designer, I will be taking you through the most essential parts of how to draw hands and answering some of your biggest questions.

The hands are composed of ligaments and muscles:

Before we start breaking down and mastering the hands there are a few things to keep in mind.

• 1. The hands are composed of ligaments which contract and relax to move your fingers.

• 2. YOUR FINGERS AREN’T STRAIGHT! A common misconception among many new artists is that the fingers on your hand are straight, however in reality they are slanted from the top.

You will also need to make yourself aware of these muscles before you move forward since they squish/ stretch according to the movement of the hand.

 

Also, remember that when you're palm side down you will see a small flap of skin between the fingers and when you are palm side up you won't!

Breakdown!

The hand can be broken down into 4 individual shapes as shown, the palm, fingers and thumb. Try heading over to Pinterest and searching for “hand reference” Find the ones that have multiple examples usually in the same settings and break them down! Think of the general shape and give it a go; I'll leave a few examples of hand breakdowns I've done in the past below:

These are around 2 days' worth of hand breakdowns, each image took around 3 hours to do (Remember to take breaks and spread this practice out over the course of 4 days, I'm just dumb lol)

Adding depth:

You can further improve your breakdowns and understanding by adding depth to the flat 2D shapes you just drew! this will later help you better understand the form and shape of the hand you're drawing, it will also help you a lot when drawing fingers as we will see later on in this tutorial!

Drawing the hand:

Now that we know about the major muscles, ligaments and how to break hands down, let’s learn how to actually draw hands!

Just like before let’s start by gathering some reference and breaking it down into 4 major shapes as I’ve done here.

Once we have our basic "flat" shapes let's start by giving them form and making them look 3D, This will help us better visualize the form of each finger and how they rotate! Similarly, it will also help give more depth to our somewhat boring-looking hand.

Finally moving onto fingers, I personally like to start by drawing the fingers as basic stick figures, this helps me to quickly get a feel for the hand i'm drawing.

Following the stick figures as a guide, I like to draw cylinders to form the fingers, making them look 3D and act as a guide for the next step! When drawing these cylinders I like to add another circle on the tip of each finger which lets me better imagine the form of the finger I'm drawing from the top!

Now that we have the construction as a base, lower its opacity and on a new layer let's start by drawing the hands using the construction layer as a guide.

 

The best advice currently is to always have references with you, take pictures of your hand or copy from online sources you'll learn the most by looking and examining the form of the hand.

 

For learning how to render hands or just skin in general view this tutorial by a fellow artist named “SomeNormalArtist”:

End.

^^short 60-second rundown!

Hi, I hope that this tutorial was helpful and you all had fun, I also made a short video tutorial on everything discussed, so go check that out if anyone's interested in a quick 60-second rundown! And as always keep creating!

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