How To Draw Hands Step by Step for 2023
In this blog post, we will learn how to draw hands step by step. This is a skill that can be useful for artists and non-artists alike. It can be used in illustrations, sketches, and even portraits! In this tutorial, we will break the process down into easy to follow steps. If you’d like to see the video of me drawing the hand, you can watch that here. So grab a pencil and paper, and let’s get started!
How To Draw Hands Step One: Understanding Anatomy
The first thing you need to do is understand the anatomy of the hand. There are 27 bones in the human hand, and they are all connected by muscles and tendons. The bones give the hand its shape, and the muscles and tendons allow us to move our fingers. To make things easier, we will only be drawing the bones that are visible from the outside. If you need a drawing pencil to get started, I have a guide for that.
How To Draw Hands Step Two:
There are many hand gestures we could draw, but for now, we will start with something “easy”. Start drawing the wrist and palm. Just two simple shapes to get things started. This will be the foundation of the sketch.
How To Draw Hands Step Three:
Here, we draw circles in place of joints. Think of it like a mannequin hand. This will help you to keep the proportions accurate. Don’t worry about being perfect as we can make refinements later.
How To Draw Hands Step Four:
We now begin to draw the muscles. Again, it is important to keep the proportions accurate. If you are not confident in your ability to draw muscles, you can always use a reference image.
How To Draw Hands Step Five:
Next, we flesh out more muscles and now the fingers and thumb. Notice how we still draw what won’t be seen in the final image. This is important as you need to understand the forms before you can start refining your drawing.
How To Draw Hands Step Six:
We now sketch in the rest of our fingers and the palm. Keep in mind that the fingers are not all the same length. The index finger is usually the longest, followed by the middle finger, then the ring finger, and finally the pinky.
How To Draw Hands Step Seven:
We now begin to erase what can’t be seen for the final image. At this stage, I normally try to fix any imperfections I didn’t fix before. If your sketch isn’t perfect, don’t sweat it. Practice makes perfect and you’ll get better over time.
How To Draw Hands Step Eight:
After you erase the hidden lines, we now begin to refine just a little more and we also add the fingernails. We also add a little more detail to the palm and wrist as well. At this stage, you’re pretty much done.
How To Draw Hands Step Nine:
We do some more refining to the sketch and we also “ink” the lines with your pencil. I’ll get into that in more detail in another tutorial, but the basic concept is this: Where lines intersect or have an “edge”, they are thicker. I know it’s hard to understand which is why I won’t go into more detail for now.
How To Draw Hands Step Ten:
We add some shading to the hand to make it more 3D. The direction of the light is the upper left. We add some detail like wrinkles on the palm and some more definition to the fingers.
And that’s it! You’ve now learned how to draw hands.
There you have it! Your very own step-by-step guide on how to draw hands. As with anything else, practice makes perfect so don’t give up if your drawings don’t look perfect at first. Just keep practicing and you’ll get better over time.
