Tips for budding artists: How to draw hands?

Many budding artists like me feel drawing hands is a difficult task to accomplish with accuracy. Either a hand drawing looks stiff or disproportional, and it is probably so because of the way we artists perceive hands. Drawing hands may require the artist to have a basic understanding of the underlying skeletal structure. Here is how I try to overcome difficulty in drawing hands.

When it comes to drawing hands, one has to observe them before starting to draw right away. Understand proportions of the fingers, palm and the thumb. A closed fist may be a lot more difficult to represent accurately compared to an open palm.

Identify the shapes:

In this example, I will try to layout steps with a technique I used to draw a palm facing down. After thorough observation, draw some rough shapes of the reference to begin with. Then it is a matter of getting the proportions right followed by drawing nails and smoothening the edges. Sounds simple I guess.
steps to drawing a hand

Steps to drawing a hand:

  1. Draw a straight line from base of the palm where the bone ‘Pisiform’ lies for the tip of the little finger
  2. Draw another line to mark for the thumb. Now this whole thing appears like the letter ‘L’
  3. Draw three more lines in between these two lines
  4. Draw a horizontal line to mark the base of the fingers
    Note: Size of the palm is slightly bigger than the distance from the base of the fingers to the length of the middle finger.
  5. Draw straight vertical lines from the previously drawn horizontal lines each aimed to intersect with lines produced in step 2
  6. Now draw rectangles for the fingers above the horizontal base line to resemble height and width of the fingers
  7. Include nails, curves and other fine features to develop the hand

Proportions:

Source: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/19/54/77/19547788e86a6d9a04fcb2f26aab6d30.jpg

“All fingers are not the same” is a famous Persian quote, which is literally true in case of drawing hands. It’s a simple observation that the middle finger is usually taller than the rest, and accurately representing this can make or break the sketch. And each finger anatomically has three phalanges except for the thumb (has only two phalanges). It is a good practice to roughly represent the size and a rectangular shape associated with these phalanges. Proximal phalange (One at the base of the hand) on all five fingers appears to be larger than the other phalange bones. A good sketch of the hand must reflect these shapes nearly accurate to the reference used.

Here are some hands drawn in various poses:

drawing rough outline for the hands

drawing hands: drawing fingers

final step in drawing hands

Bonus tip: One of the best ways to find a variety of shapes to study for hands is to visit a museum that has any statues or sculptures for to explore. If that is not an option, there are some good mobile apps which allow artists to reference 3D models of hands. I personally use an application called “MagicPoser” on iOS. It has some useful features, but it takes some effort getting used to. If none of these options work for, use the other hand that you don’t use for sketching (non-dominant hand) for reference. Happy Sketching!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to draw a chair in perspective?

Image
Drawing in perspective (Image courtesy:  https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/571323902726615393/ ) Here is a seemingly simple task. Draw a chair. How hard could it be? A chair is not too difficult to draw, and if you are a beginner like me, you would probably want to follow some simple steps. You might want to draw this chair in perspective to make it look realistic. So, let's start with drawing some reference lines and vanishing points. This way, it may become a lot easier to get all the proportions of the chair right. Please know that it may not be easy to understand and draw these perspective lines the first time you try, and may be, we can deal with just the perspective lines and how to draw them in another post. (Vanishing point on the left is not visible because I had to blow up the picture to show the rough sketch) If you are a beginner, you are probably going to create a shabby looking perspectives + rough outline of the chair we looked at in the first
Read more

Three tips for budding artists

Image
Warning: This is going to sound like philosophy Practice maketh a Picasso However little you may practice, do so regularly if not daily. Progress is possible when you practice, and that statement is true for probably anything that we do. When you want to practice, do so using real world references as much as possible. Even household objects could turn out to be good references to use. Here is an example from Alice Jane Isak on Pinterest. The artist used a coffee mug as reference, and the outcome is great! Watching and observing Yes artists need practice, but practice what or how? Key to being a better artist is in the art of observation. Be patient with yourself. When you practice, it is not a commissioned art piece for someone. You are trying to hone your skills, and rushing in to it is not the way to go. Observing a coffee mug will allow you to see details you wouldn't otherwise notice. Things like where does the handle end, and the mug begin. When you start to watch
Read more