HOME | DD

Description

Incoming lecture and a shit ton of information below.
Understanding the anatomy of the hand is not only incredibly useful, but absolutely essential. A character should speak through body language just as much as they speak through words. Hands are an extremely important part of that body language.
Besides overall posture, there are two invaluable tools you can use to express a character’s emotions. These are the face and the HANDS. Both are equally important and heavily dependent on one another. A single facial expression can mean any number of things depending on what type of hand position accompanies it. (A smile and a friendly handshake vs a smile and a clenched fist.) There’s a reason why most people “speak” with their hands while carrying on a normal conversation. (Try holding a conversation while keeping your hands and arms perfectly still. In a casual setting, it feels awkward.)
An awesome example of this is the character animation in Disney’s Atlantis.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXJYuI…
In the video, you’ll notice that there is hardly any point where a character is talking and NOT using their hands to emphasize what they are saying or feeling. This is what humans naturally do. Always try to incorporate expressive hand gestures when you draw characters. It’ll do wonders.
Of course this requires that we first learn to draw hands correctly. How do we do that?
We look at what is going on inside the hand. By doing this, we learn to see how it moves naturally.

The issue I’ve suffered from in the past, and I’m sure many people have, is not understanding the proportions of the hand. How long should the fingers be in relation to each other, the palm, the rest of the arm? An incredibly useful way to address this is to break the hand into two squares; the palm/thumb square and the phalanges square.
There’s an incredibly useful proportion that can be applied to the lengths of each phalanx (finger bone). Each bone is 2/3 the length of the bone previous to it. This proportion also applies to your toes and metatarsals.
Aside from this, your middle finger will often be the “guide” finger of your hand. Were it not culturally unacceptable to point with your middle finger, everyone would do it. It’s the longest finger, it’s just natural.
You can draw a curve that runs over the tips of each phalanx, where the middle finger is always the longest, followed by the index and ring fingers, and ending with the pinkie.
Treat each joint of the finger as an individual cylinder to encourage 3-dimensional realism.
The thumb will be addressed more when we get to the muscles and fat of the palm. All that you need to understand right now is that the thumb will hardly extend past the middle of the first phalanx.

The palm is just as important as learning to draw the fingers themselves. One cannot exist realistically without the other. The palm itself is made of four major areas. Divide that same lower square into thirds and the bottom two thirds will be dedicated to two fat pads. This is the padding that makes your hands soft and actually look like hands. Above these two pads is a rectangular bar that rests just below your fingers. A triangle shape is formed at the center of these three shapes.
The thumb is a unique flower. The best way to address it is to treat it almost like a “joystick” The base of said joy stick will extend beyond the index-finger side of the lower palm. Creating a sort of “mound” and emerging from this mound is the stick which forms the second bone of your hand, immediately followed by the ball/egg shape that will become your thumb.
The shape of every finger will often be; rounded on the bottom and flat on the top. This combination of flats and curves creates visual interest and a natural/alive feel the the hand. The palm can be addressed as a sort of “curved matchbox” or a hip flask shape.

And finally, I’m going to address a topic which most people avoid when talking about learning to draw hands. Fingernails.
Despite any distaste you may have for drawing them or arguments you can produce in defense of not drawing fingernails, these freakish plates of keratin are your best friend when drawing hands. They provide a tremendous amound of visual information regarding the position of the fingers.
If you were shown an image of nothing but the floating finger nails of an invisible hands, you would still have a pretty good idea of what position that hand is in. Learning to incorporate these little buggers is essential to drawing accurate looking fingers.
They travel about halfway through the smallest phalanx, depending on the person they can be much longer or much shorter.

So that’s it. Smack all that information together and you start to get something that looks like a hand.
Besides from that, all I can tell you is to use references. For God’s sake. Use references. Everyone does it because it has proven to be the fastest and most efficient way to draw something accurately. There’s no shame in it. And remember that YOU are your own best source of anatomy reference. Use your own hands as reference.
Want to draw a character holding a cup or a book or a phone or a sword even?Hold those things yourself. Look at your hands while you do it, have someone take a photo or just work from memory. Feel what your characters are doing. You’re a human too so the odds are that you’ll be doing things the same way they are. If you draw something that looks awkward or uncomfortable then the odds are that it IS awkward and uncomfortable. Use your own hands and arms and body to find the best positions to do things in. Look at how the different fingers rely on each other or how they don’t rely on each other.
Choose something about the hand that you want to improve on and focus on that part until you can do it well, then move onto the next part. And no matter happens. Do not. STOP. PRACTICING.
Alright, I guess that’s it. I hope that you find some of this information useful! (especially if you read all this way).
Happy drawing everyone!
Draco~

Description

Incoming lecture and a shit ton of information below.
Understanding the anatomy of the hand is not only incredibly useful, but absolutely essential. A character should speak through body language just as much as they speak through words. Hands are an extremely important part of that body language.
Besides overall posture, there are two invaluable tools you can use to express a character’s emotions. These are the face and the HANDS. Both are equally important and heavily dependent on one another. A single facial expression can mean any number of things depending on what type of hand position accompanies it. (A smile and a friendly handshake vs a smile and a clenched fist.) There’s a reason why most people “speak” with their hands while carrying on a normal conversation. (Try holding a conversation while keeping your hands and arms perfectly still. In a casual setting, it feels awkward.)
An awesome example of this is the character animation in Disney’s Atlantis.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXJYuI…
In the video, you’ll notice that there is hardly any point where a character is talking and NOT using their hands to emphasize what they are saying or feeling. This is what humans naturally do. Always try to incorporate expressive hand gestures when you draw characters. It’ll do wonders.
Of course this requires that we first learn to draw hands correctly. How do we do that?
We look at what is going on inside the hand. By doing this, we learn to see how it moves naturally.

The issue I’ve suffered from in the past, and I’m sure many people have, is not understanding the proportions of the hand. How long should the fingers be in relation to each other, the palm, the rest of the arm? An incredibly useful way to address this is to break the hand into two squares; the palm/thumb square and the phalanges square.
There’s an incredibly useful proportion that can be applied to the lengths of each phalanx (finger bone). Each bone is 2/3 the length of the bone previous to it. This proportion also applies to your toes and metatarsals.
Aside from this, your middle finger will often be the “guide” finger of your hand. Were it not culturally unacceptable to point with your middle finger, everyone would do it. It’s the longest finger, it’s just natural.
You can draw a curve that runs over the tips of each phalanx, where the middle finger is always the longest, followed by the index and ring fingers, and ending with the pinkie.
Treat each joint of the finger as an individual cylinder to encourage 3-dimensional realism.
The thumb will be addressed more when we get to the muscles and fat of the palm. All that you need to understand right now is that the thumb will hardly extend past the middle of the first phalanx.

The palm is just as important as learning to draw the fingers themselves. One cannot exist realistically without the other. The palm itself is made of four major areas. Divide that same lower square into thirds and the bottom two thirds will be dedicated to two fat pads. This is the padding that makes your hands soft and actually look like hands. Above these two pads is a rectangular bar that rests just below your fingers. A triangle shape is formed at the center of these three shapes.
The thumb is a unique flower. The best way to address it is to treat it almost like a “joystick” The base of said joy stick will extend beyond the index-finger side of the lower palm. Creating a sort of “mound” and emerging from this mound is the stick which forms the second bone of your hand, immediately followed by the ball/egg shape that will become your thumb.
The shape of every finger will often be; rounded on the bottom and flat on the top. This combination of flats and curves creates visual interest and a natural/alive feel the the hand. The palm can be addressed as a sort of “curved matchbox” or a hip flask shape.

And finally, I’m going to address a topic which most people avoid when talking about learning to draw hands. Fingernails.
Despite any distaste you may have for drawing them or arguments you can produce in defense of not drawing fingernails, these freakish plates of keratin are your best friend when drawing hands. They provide a tremendous amound of visual information regarding the position of the fingers.
If you were shown an image of nothing but the floating finger nails of an invisible hands, you would still have a pretty good idea of what position that hand is in. Learning to incorporate these little buggers is essential to drawing accurate looking fingers.
They travel about halfway through the smallest phalanx, depending on the person they can be much longer or much shorter.

So that’s it. Smack all that information together and you start to get something that looks like a hand.
Besides from that, all I can tell you is to use references. For God’s sake. Use references. Everyone does it because it has proven to be the fastest and most efficient way to draw something accurately. There’s no shame in it. And remember that YOU are your own best source of anatomy reference. Use your own hands as reference.
Want to draw a character holding a cup or a book or a phone or a sword even?Hold those things yourself. Look at your hands while you do it, have someone take a photo or just work from memory. Feel what your characters are doing. You’re a human too so the odds are that you’ll be doing things the same way they are. If you draw something that looks awkward or uncomfortable then the odds are that it IS awkward and uncomfortable. Use your own hands and arms and body to find the best positions to do things in. Look at how the different fingers rely on each other or how they don’t rely on each other.
Choose something about the hand that you want to improve on and focus on that part until you can do it well, then move onto the next part. And no matter happens. Do not. STOP. PRACTICING.
Alright, I guess that’s it. I hope that you find some of this information useful! (especially if you read all this way).
Happy drawing everyone!
Draco~