How to draw hands

Are you good at drawing hands?

I suspect that many of you have difficulty drawing them.

The quality of a character drawing can be improved by drawing not only the face but also the hands attractively.

So today I will explain the tips for drawing hands with each of the problem patterns.

This is the illustration we will use this time.

Fingers become too long

I have the feeling that the fingers are too long even though I’ve used reference materials…

If you think so, make sure that the “length from the ulna bone to the back of the hand” and the “length of the middle finger” are the same.

“Length from the ulna bone to the back of the hand” = “Length of the middle finger”

In addition, for each finger except the thumb, the “length from the fingertips to the middle knuckle” is the same as the “length from the middle knuckle to the base knuckle”.

Hands become too big/too small

Now the shape of the hand is better, but you may find that the size of the hand does not fit into the characters.

Here is what you need to remember about hand size.

• The length of an adult’s hands is about the “length from the bottom of the chin to the hairline”.
• The length of a teenager’s hands is about the same as “the length from the bottom of the chin to the middle of the forehead”.

There is the transform tool in MediBang paint, so create a separate layer for the hands and zoom in/out to adjust the hand size (shortcut: [Ctrl/Command+Y]).

Creating separate layers makes the transformation process easier.

 

Where to draw fingernails

The nails are positioned at half the length of the first knuckle.

How to draw attractive hands

Now we will draw a hand in the illustration.

Rough sketch

If you decide on the overall image of the character and the color balance at the rough sketch stage, you will not have any problems with coloring.

The following is what I refer to when I draw hands.

• Reference posing materials
• My own hand reflected in a mirror
• A selfie of my own hand

Inking

Ink the lines to create the line drawing.

I set the image stabilization to 8 (for iPad) when creating line drawings.

Set the value to your preference.

After creating the rough line drawing, adjust the details.

Erase the areas of finger lines that touch the cheeks or lips to give the appearance of soft, hydrated cheeks and delicate fingers.

Add the fingernails so that their length is “half the length of the first knuckle”.

Now the line drawing is done.

 

Coloring fingers

Create a “coloring folder” and create new layers for each part and place them in the folder.

Define the light source.

Since I’ve set the light to come from the top left, the palm covered with fingers and the back of the hand facing down will be shaded.

Add shadow color to the inside of the joint and to the shaded areas of the bone.

Coloring nails

Apply the base color to the nails.

This time we are not going to add any shadows to the nails, we are just going to add some highlights to make the nails shiny.

Select white and adjust the pen pressure of the watercolor brush to add highlights.

Concentrate on the fade in/out of the brush and adjust the highlights so that their edges (indicated by the red arrows) fade slightly.

If you find this difficult, you can use the airbrush and choose the transparent color to slightly blur the edges.

 

Conclusion: Practice drawing hands and improve the quality of your illustration!

Now we’ve done.

Things to remember when drawing attractive hands

• Focus on the length of the fingers and the back of the hands
• Adjust the size of the hands with the size of the people’s faces
• Refer to your own hands in the mirror or in selfies

Adding a single hand to your work can improve its quality surprisingly.

Practice drawing hands using your own hands as a reference and aim for high quality illustrations!

(Text・Illustrations / Amane)