Starting off with something simple

Drawing hands is hard! And, sadly, for complex and expressive hand gestures you do need to know how they work. A believable, realistic hand will always convey the emotion better, but believable doesn't mean detailed.

 

What do you think is more expressive?

Some artist might be able to pull off expressivity and complex rendering both, but that takes years and years of practice. For now, let's look at some tools that would help us draw hands easier instead.

You can also find your own tools - whatever works for you!

Now what?

Exactly. Now what — what feeling would you like to convey?

 

There are some basic recognizable gestures that we all use —

but we could add some variation, some flavor to them as well.

For example, negative emotions like anger, embarrasment, sadness tend to bend the silhouette down. People feeling upset or frustrated want to close off, they have less energy; Anger, anxiety make people tense, historically these emotions were connected with facing some kind of danger, so instincts tell you to protect yourself.

That's why, even if you're not drawing anything intense or cartoony, it would help to use dynamic lines that bend inwards if you want the emotions to be clear and readable.

On the contrary, you need the energy going “out” if you're drawing something like joy, excitement, curiosity, etc.

 

 

Apply different moods to get different results!

 

 

But can we go deeper than this?

Sure we can! Till now, all these gestures have been lacking personality. In real life, people all have their own distinctive body languages, so you might want to decide for your characters whether they have something in their personality that influences their self-expression.

 

Just one gesture, one emotion or action could be shown with different little details.

How would you portray a character pondering something? There are so many options!

If a person is shy and meek in general, even their most assertive poses will pale in comparison to those of a confident person.

 

 

And so some hand gestures only work with fitting personalities —

Who would sit like this? An aristocratic evil vampire or an easy-going down-to-earth farmer? Some subversion could be done too, of course, but bear in mind that body language and hand gestures are interconnected with a person's character.

 

To add something special to your characters, take some time to find gestures that might not even make total sense outside the context. If you have the facial expression, the surroundings, or maybe even other comic frames, you'll be all right — AND you'll have a natural pose distinguishing your character from many others.

Is there just one way of gesturing when you're conversing? No! Realistically speaking, people tend to make all sorts of hand movements.

To build up a library of unique gestures and weird habits, study real life! Photo studies are good, but videos, where you can see the gestures in motion, might be even more useful.

Summing up

You don't need impeccable anatomy skills for drawing with emotion — knowing how to draw hands would help a lot, but in this case following simple, bold lines is better than spending several hours on one finger. So cut corners!

 

There's a lot of feelings people have, but most of them can be divided into two: those that need outward action lines and those that need inward action lines. Try to catch the whole silhouette to convey the mood, and then add details to specify.

 

Watch your gestures! Not all of them are applicable to all cases. To give your character a more distinguished personality, adjust their body language accordingly.

 

Think of a gesture.. and then check if there's anything else that could replace it. Sure, there are some standard gestures and poses that work and that anyone could understand, but in real life there are variations. So, by choosing something unconventional you're breathing life into your drawings.

 

Good luck and thank you for reading this far! <з