drawanyway.com

So, you know your hands like… well, like the back of your hand. Only, I’d question the accuracy of that particular idiom, because, when it comes down to it, most of us become completely stuck when it comes to drawing hands, even our own. Many is the perfectly capable life-drawing that is completely ruined by an unworldly set of flippers perched at the end of the arms.

Why are hands so difficult? Well, they are complex shapes, and (thankfully, when it comes to the survival of the human race) they can take on many different configurations. So, while it’s quite easy to simply draw, say, ears again and again until you get good at it, drawing a hand from one angle does not mean you’re going to get any better at the other many possibilities. You’ll notice, above, that I have taken the easy option and shown the hand at its simplest, straight on and in only two dimensions (also, without an accompanying body, which also makes it easier because I didn’t have to think about what angle it would join the arm at).

Here are a few basic rules to at least improve your hand-drawing. Of course, practice is the real key.

1. Size. Hands are larger than we typically think. You can pretty much cover your whole face with your hand, can’t you? Yet, when it comes to drawing the figure, a common error is to make the hands half the size of the face.

2. Shape. Your hand is effectively a square, with five different length sticks coming from it. The fingers do not all point in the same direction - again this is something that of course you know, but that seems to be forgotten when drawing. The thumb, in particular, is likely to be at a totally different angle to the fingers. Don’t forget your finger joints, too, and the proportion of each finger that is divided: the distance from the top joint to the tip is shorter than the distances between the other two joints. Personally, I find it useful to begin with the basic shape of the hand, then draw a line representing each finger before drawing them in.

3. Negative space. Hands are a classic example of a subject that benefits from the use of negative space - that is, everyone thinks they know what they look like, and those preconceptions often prevent real observation. You will almost certainly have success if you start drawing the shapes between the fingers rather than the fingers themselves.

4. Cheat. If all else fails, don’t let it stand in your way - just use your imagination. Walt Disney and plenty of other animators famously drew their characters with only four fingers, so as to have less to worry about with each frame. You can take the same idea to its extreme by not drawing fingers at all, but instead just drawing the general shape of the hand’s outline. With some styles of drawing - very loose images, or cartoons - this works just fine.