Drawing Lesson 21, Part 4 – How to Draw Hands

How to Draw Hands – Depicting Hands’ Gestures

Video Lesson Description

In this video lesson you will discover How to Draw Hands and hand’s gestures in realistic manner.

How to Draw Hands

We continue the drawing of the hands with various gestures.

Some of the most difficult views are when a hand is seen from the palm side at oblique angles. When it comes to the process of ‘How to Draw Hands’, I make an outline in fast and light pencil strokes to capture the main hand’s proportions and relative positions of the wrist, hand-block and fingers.

When you think about How to Draw Hands, keep in mind that the rhythm of the fingers needs to be sketched out. Check out how the fingertips follow a natural rhythm.

When it comes to how to draw hands realistically and with confidence, a fine artist needs to be aware of the finger’s rhythms. Naturally, fingers are not sticking out in any random direction or being flexed and abducted unsystematically. Instead, there is a system or rhythm, which forms certain patterns. These patterns very much depend on the //drawingacademy.com/drawing-lessons/how-to-draw-a-hand, as well as, hands muscles. This needs to be accounted for when you think how to draw hands.

The rhythm of distances between fingers and their parts becomes very apparent when drawing hand gestures. Check out how we can use curved arches to define the positions of the fingertips, DIP (or distal inter-phalangeal) joints, PIP (or proximal inter-phalangeal) joints, and MCP (or metacarpo-phalangeal) joints.

For example, a relaxed hand tends to have slightly bent fingers. Another example is when one finger moves in a certain direction, and physically, the neighbouring finger or fingers will tend to follow this movement in the same direction, albeit, lagging behind.

Also, please note how the distal phalanges appear to be curved forward and upward, while the thumb’s curve seems to point in an opposite direction.

Another rhythm you need to observe and depict is the sequence of distances between the fingers.

In this example, the distance between the index and third fingertips is bigger than between the third and forth fingertips, which in turn is bigger that between the forth and little finger fingertips.

When initial light lines are sketched out, and you think How to Draw Hands further, you can continue with bolder pencil strokes to fine tune the hand’s contours.

Thinking about how to draw hands, remember that bent or abducted fingers tend to point inward to the central line of the hand; while extended or adducted fingers tend to point in outward direction from the hand’s central line.

Considering the finger’s lengths and proportions, and thinking how to draw hands, remember that the third finger is the longest; the length of the index finger is usually equal to the length of the fourth finger; and the fingertips of the index and fourth fingers reach the base of the nail of the middle finger; and finally the length of the little finger is up to the DIP (or distal inter-phalangeal) joint of the forth finger.

The width of the wrist is equal to the width of the index, third and forth fingers together. When the thumb is adducted, it forms the triangular shape between the thumb and the hand-block.

When you think about how to draw hands more realistically, study the hand gestures in a multitude of gestures by making numerous sketches. This way, you will get confidence and experience drawing hands.