How to Draw HANDS – Details for Realistic Hands!

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How to Draw HANDS – Details for Realistic Hands!

354K
Mark as Completed

Assignment

Your homework for this lesson is to find your assignment from the hand bones lesson. With the bone drawings, you already figured out the positioning, proportions, and skeletal forms. Now, you'll draw on top, using a piece of tracing paper traditionally or in a new layer digitally, and turn your drawings into fully-fleshed hands. You'll have to add all the muscles you learned in part 1, and all the surface details you learned in this lesson. This exercise will help you connect your understanding of the skeleton with the surface details. You're inventing this stuff from your imagination, but don't be afraid to look at your own hand, or photos as inspiration.

Newest
Jacob Donglley
This lesson on drawing realistic hands is incredibly insightful! Hands are notoriously challenging to master, but the focus on details and structure makes the process much more approachable. I appreciate how the breakdown simplifies complex anatomy while encouraging practice to refine technique. Proko consistently delivers high-quality guidance—thanks for making art skills more attainable! healthywz.com
Alejandro
2mo
My assigment for this lesson.
Ezra
5mo
Difficult as usual, but happy with how these came out :) please let me know if you have any feedback
Samuel Sanjaya
adding the muscles to the bones assignment from months ago. The proportion is skewed, I think I should have drawn the bone new
@hiflow
2yr
Critique welcome
Lenserd martell
It seems to be able to recognize gestures about hands.
Steve Lenze
What your doing right here is keeping the hands simple and gestural, without to much detail. this is how you should practice hands, good job:)
Phattara Groodpan
Samuel Parker
Hand tracings
Anubhav Saini
Liandro
2yr
Hey, @Anubhav Saini! Again, I appreciate your patience with my delayed replies. Great job doing this fun exercise. Paraphrasing Stan, drawing hands is hardly ever easy, so I imagine it must have been challenging - but I’d say you managed to complete a pretty nice set of hand studies here. For this critique, I think it’s better to comment image by image, so let’s go. IMAGE 1 - I think it’s great that you tried this dynamic and interesting pose on your own - you didn’t have a Stan’s demo to copy from in this case, so I assume it must have been extra challenging. I think the drawing turned out pretty nice overall. I’m also assuming that the two drawings in this image are two different attempts you took at the same pose. In my point of view, the one on the left looks a bit more well-resolved in general (compared to the other one) because the fingers’ proportions look a bit more realistic (which was an important goal for an exercise on drawing realistic hands), the thenar eminence feels more rounded and the palm feels a bit more 3D, I believe due to the “heart line” that’s wrapping around its edge. In the drawing on the right, the 3rd phalanges (tips of the fingers) look a bit too big and round, as if they were being caricatured (which, for this specific exercise, doesn’t seem to be a relevant goal to aim for). IMAGE 2 - I really like the three ones on the top. Especially the one in the middle top - probably my favorite one in this page. The three on the bottom also look fine overall, although, for more realism, I’d recommend a few adjustments in proportions and form: — The drawing on the bottom left seems to have the ring and pinky fingers a bit too elongated. — The drawing on the middle bottom has more believable proportions, but I feel that the interior of the palm is not clearly described in 3D space - perhaps using basic forms to build it up and wrapping some cross contours could help. Also, I think the knuckles and finger joints look a bit too caricatured for what is expected in this assignment. — For the drawing on the bottom right, I’d say it definitely looks pretty caricatured/cartoony on the tips of the fingers and nails. Personally, I find it pretty cool, but if your goal was to draw realistic hands (as this lesson proposes), adjustments might be welcome. IMAGES 3 AND 4 (which look the same) - The fist (bottom left) looks quite nice. The drawing on the bottom right also looks pretty good (and it’s great that you used rhythm lines to connect the fingers and keep more accurate proportions); I’d suggest taking a bit more time to add in the wrinkles on the back of the fingers, since they are sort of “natural cross-contours” and can definitely help add a stronger sense of 3D form and spatiality. Same goes for the pose of the “OK” sign (top left). Now, about the two drawings of the very dynamic hand with fingers being spread (the bigger one and the one on the mid right): compared to each other, I’d say the smaller one has more accurate proportions of the size relationship between fingers and palm (in the big drawing, the fingers look a bit too short). In both, I love that they look very descriptive in terms of form and space, but, also in both, I think the anatomy needs a bit more structure - for this pose, try using more straight lines whenever possible and remember to relate the surface of the fingers to their underlying bone structure, so that they won’t feel as if they were “broken” or “sausage-like” (considering that the goal is realism). IMAGE 5 - For this one, I’m guessing you used Stan’s drawing as the reference, instead of the photo, was it? Well, either way, I think it’s a good drawing. As a suggestion, maybe I’d tune down the stylization of the Ulna a little bit - instead of making it as a geometric cone, I’d consider the actual bone form and its anatomical placement (how it comes from the forearm to pop up on the surface of the wrist). Also, I don’t see light sketch lines showing the fingers through and how they wrap around the object being held, so another suggestion would be to use the “draw-through” technique when constructing hands, especially when holding objects, as it can certainly help a lot in visualizing everything as forms in 3D space. Hope this helps! Please let me know in case you have any questions. Good studies!
Margaret Langston
Hand 5
Margaret Langston
Hand 4
Margaret Langston
Hand 3
Margaret Langston
Hand 2
Margaret Langston
Hand 1
Margaret Langston
Hand Assignment 2. Lots of images because I'm trying to show process. This is analog, with printouts of the original hand bone drawings (because I digitize drawings then toss them) with new drawings on tracing paper. Done before viewing the demos. Putting each hand in a separate post
Benjamin Green
Hope you're open to some positive criticism. I assume you posted these because you want to improve. I think you're doing great and should keep up these exercises. Top things I notice are that the fingers aren't quite the right proportions and the palms look a bit thin. Hands 2 and 3 for instance have the index finger the same height as the middle finger. There is a really great book you can find for free on archive dot org, Burne Hogarth, Drawing Dynamic Hands. A bit overly detailed and I personally don't like how over the top he draws hands, but he really did know his stuff. Keep up the good work!
@edodum
2yr
Hello Everyone, I try to apply the advice I get in part 1. Now for me I feel like the worst issue is to place the light and the shadow correctly (It was the hardest thing for me). But I feel like I was improving over the trials. Thanks for your critics
@abrahan13
2yr
any feedback is appreciated
Sandra Süsser
Hand Details lesson notes
@fefelix
2yr
Also I made more sketches trying to invent gestural and slightly exaggerated poses. Critiques, pleease! :) Any comments/corrections on readability, proportions, gesture and shading are highly appreciated.
Liandro
2yr
This looks so cool! I love this as a "hand caricature" exercise. I'd defintely be curious to see even how farther these hand poses could be pushed. Nice job, @fefelix!
@fefelix
2yr
While I did have a lot of fun doing this, I think the proportions are a bit screwed, right? I tried some forced perspective- foreshortening thing, but, imo, the 2 distal phalanges of the index finger are too big nevertheless? And the thumb's still too small? Highly appreciate your feedback on that matter!
Jesper Axelsson
Cool drawing! Well drawn! - It's great that you dare to play with perspective in your studies, so consider this point for the case this painting was for a comission for example: It's quite hard to read. When I look at it from a distance I mistake the arm for a finger and the pose and proportion don't signal "hand" clearly to me. Checking your work from a distance could be a good way to avoid this. - I think most of your observations are correct. I might disagree on the thumb being to small. It is too small compared to the other fingers, but compared to the palm it might be a little big. I attached an image of how you might check wether the length of the index finger is correct. Take it with a grain of salt, since it's probably a bit off, but it could be a good way to approximate, then you can eyeball from there. Hope this helps :)
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Founder of Proko, artist and teacher of drawing, painting, and anatomy. I try to make my lessons fun and ultra packed with information.
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