How to draw hands

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Learning to draw hands can be a real challenge. Even experienced artists have to study this skill hard to master it because the human hand is a very complex anatomy. You can continue to study the anatomy of the hand, and there are also approaches to drawing hands that can give you a head start.

This article includes two key lessons on drawing hands. First, concept artist Brynn Metheny shares a step-by-step tutorial for drawing hands, including tips on how to break down the hand shape into simple shapes like cylinders and spheres. Below, artist and graphic designer Stan Prokopenko takes a closer look at the anatomy of the hand to help you understand its basic structure. This should give you more confidence in the accuracy of your work when drawing the hands.

For more drawing practice, also check out our drawing tutorials. how to draw a handAnd how to draw a face. We also have a wider range of themes in our bumper. how to draw collection of drawing lessons. And if you need the right tools for your art, check out our selection best pencils for artists.

How to draw a hand

Drawing hands

01. Look inside the hand

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

The human hand is made up of bones, tendons, a large amount of connective tissue, as well as muscle and fat. It is a strong and flexible appendage. Getting to know how it is formed and how it works can really help you learn how to draw hands. It can be useful to sketch out skeletal studies of human anatomy in general, but when we learn to draw hands, much of the shape we know is lost at the skeletal level.

However, if we overlay the surface view with the skeleton view, we can estimate where the skeleton is in our hands. Scroll down to learn more about the anatomy of the hand so you can begin to understand how the mechanism works and use that knowledge to create your drawing.

02. Break your hand into pieces

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

You can layer wide shapes onto the skeleton view to build the arm. Use a flattened wedge shape for the palm; rectangles for numbers and a teardrop shape for the thumb. You can use the skeleton image above as a basis for this step (click the icon in the top right corner to enlarge the image).

When you’re learning to draw hands, simplifying these shapes will help take the stress out of drawing the perfect hand from the start. From here you can start filling in shapes into 3D shapes to build the arm and put it in perspective.

03. Build a hand in 3D.

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

Now it’s time to develop the shapes to make your freehand drawing look more three-dimensional. Here our flattened wedge of the palm takes on another dimension, the fingers become cylinders and the knuckles become spheres. We will call this type of hand planar.

By drawing our shapes we can show volume, as you can see above on the pads of our palms. This is also a good time to work on proportions and placement. Note that the length of the palm is approximately equal to the length of the middle finger (this is indicated by the green lines). Remember that fingers are never the same length or perfectly straight. What sells it is the imperfection.

Notice the blue lines indicating the angle at which the fingers end. We can also see that the middle finger comes straight out from the middle of the hand. Maintaining these proportions will help you ensure that your hands look natural and neat.

04. Arrangement of figures

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

Once you’ve drawn a 3D version of your hand, you can try a few poses. By breaking the hand down into simpler shapes and using the outline to explore the volumes, you can start positioning the hand in different poses without worrying too much about the details.

You can use your hands as a guide, but use a planar view to make things easier. This way you can quickly draw hand poses without worrying too much about the details. While creating this tutorial, I found myself looking at my hands quite often. However, if you need to sketch it yourself, you may need to ask a friend or family member to help.

Notice the little diagram of a cylinder and sphere above. The fingers can sometimes be unruly – at this stage it is best to keep them very simple and use 3D shapes to represent them.

05. Let’s start with airplanes

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

Once you’ve had some fun with posing, choose a pose you like and, using your hand as a reference, draw the hand flat. In the picture above, the small cones indicate which way the cylinders are moving. This will help you understand where the curves of the cylinders should bend.

Again, at this point we want to keep it simple and not worry about the details. You want to capture proportion, perspective and volume. Please note: It is important to work carefully at this stage if you are using a pencil.

06. Find gesture and form

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

In our examples we’re working digitally, so here I’ll lower the opacity of the flat drawing to start finding the shapes I see on my hand. If you are working traditionally on paper, be sure to start light and gradually increase the volume and shapes with heavier lead only as you get to the end of the tutorial.

From here you can use the planar view as a guide to help you draw the shape of your own hand by looking at it. Be careful to pay attention to how the shapes wrap around each other, and also be aware of the silhouette of your hand. In the example above, you can see where I deviated from the pink line and instead used it as a guide to find where the shapes were turning in space.

07. We begin to detail the styling

(Image: © Brynn Metheny)

Now you can pull back the first two layers or switch to a heavier layer to start drawing in the details. You can see how useful it is to create both a flat drawing and a gesture drawing, really helping me place details like wrinkles and creases on the arm. I can also start gluing my nails and visualizing the side of my palm.

Anatomy of the hand

Anatomy of the hand

Hands are complex anatomy, so drawing them can be challenging—even intimidating. But if you start to understand your hands inside out, you can take the guesswork out of it. By understanding all the dimensions, structures and connections, you have a blueprint that will allow you to make confident decisions about how you present the hand. Keep reading to dive deeper into the structure of a hand under the skin and learn how to draw hands well.

01. Hand bones

The forearm is divided into two bones. In our forearm, the radius bone can rotate around the ulna bone, which is why our arms can flip over. The radius and ulna make up three-quarters of the length of the humerus. At the top of the arm is the femur, a thick and strong bone. It is hammer-shaped, with a long cylindrical body and a set of large protuberances (condyles) at the bottom. The femur is three cranial units long.

02. Hand bones

Our hands are made up of three parts: first a collection of bones, then a set of long bridge-like bones and three-jointed fingers. The three parts of the hand are arranged from small to large for maximum dexterity, so you have a short wrist and long, elegant fingers. The length of your arm is equal to the length of your face.

03. Celebrity Tenara

Most of the muscles that control the arm are located in the forearm (called the extrinsic muscles). But there are some muscles in the arm itself that you should be aware of. Called intrinsic muscles, they create three soft masses on the bony surface of the arm. All three are shaped like droplets, making them easy to catch. The largest one, running from the wrist to the thumb, creates a undulation when the thumb is extended outward and gives the thumb a potbelly as the thumb approaches the palm.

04. Hypothenar elevation

The other palmar mass runs from the base of the hand to the little finger of the metacarpal bone. It actually wraps around the bone from the outside, which is why the little finger of your hand is so soft and soft. Notice that his little finger is flatter than his thumb.

05. First dorsal interosseous.

The third major muscle mass can be found on the back of the arm. It fills the space between the metacarpal bone of the thumb and the metacarpal bone of the index finger. This is easy to see by pressing your thumb against your index finger as this creates the shape of a large round egg. When the thumb is extended, it stretches.

06. Bones on the back of the hand

The back of the hand is bony, especially at the joints. You can represent this characteristic by drawing the outline of the back with straight lines and angles. The back of the hand is a flat plane and when the hand moves it does not change much (only some tendons move). This is in contrast to the front of the hand, which varies greatly depending on the position of the little finger and thumb.

07. Tendons in the hand

There are also tendons that run along the back of the arm. Every finger gets at least one. When drawing the tendons, make sure they follow the larger shape of the arm. Don’t paint each cylindrical tendon with dark lines and sharp edges because this will create fun, distracting gaps in the middle of the arm. A subtle hint here and there is all you need unless you’re drawing a character that requires pronounced tendons.

08. Veins on the arm

The back of the hand also has veins. These veins run along the back of the arm like tendons and snake into the spaces between the bones where they are safe. You should clearly distinguish between tendons and veins: tendons are straight, and veins are meandering, like lazy rivers. Veins also have a darker and cooler local color.

09. Fat pads on the palms

Finally, on top of the muscles, the center of the palm is surrounded by fat pads. They cover and soften the muscle mass of the palm. There are also fat pads on the palmar side of each finger. These fat pads are very pliable and can be squeezed, stretched and flattened to enhance the action of the hand.

For more tips and practical advice, check out our selection best drawing books.