We want to think of everything in terms of shapes first before we do anything that is form related
with our hands. So, hold up your hand in front of you right now! So when we look at our palm, right,
that entire palm is what you can call your plane. So the plane of your hand...you can kind of draw it
as a trapezoid kind of shape, almost like a teacup. Take note of the heights of your different fingers...
right? Every single finger has a different height, right, you'll notice that your middle finger
is the tallest one, your pointer finger can also be called your index, that's the one that you use
to point -- so this one. Say if our thumb is here, our index finger and our ring finger are approximately
the same height, our pinky is the shortest, and our thumb kind of stops either at the
first joint of our index finger or at like the base of our index finger. But if you kind of trace
the tops of your fingers, you'll notice that it kind of makes what I like to call the mountain.
You can kind of cut this up and before...right, your middle finger being the tallest, index and ring
being kind of the same height, your ring finger might be a little bit taller, and your pinky
will be your shortest finger. Keep your hands still out in front, you'll notice that the squishiest
parts are directly under the fingers here. There's a section of fat that's kind of here, and a section
of fat that's kind of here. And this is generally what is connected to your thumb...kind of pull it
out a little bit, and then your thumb kind of stops around here, right? You can kind of continue out
this little section of fat. We've talked about just the kind of the heights, so let's get into
the actual drawings of each finger, and there's a couple of ways that people tend to draw the
fingers of hands. So one of them is...let's think of more in forms now so we're thinking more cubes and
rectangular prisms. For me personally, I keep the plane kind of the same -- if you've ever seen a flask,
right? Kind of the same shape as that, so like a... the plane of the hand, I think of like a very flat
cylinder. I mark off different circles for where i want my fingers to go, and I'll also mark off
the fatty sections of my hand. Right, so of course there's another extension of the thumb
on this side...because if I'm thinking that this is where my pointer goes, then this is the middle
and the ring and the pinky. Hold your hand out in front of you once again, if you bend your
thumb you'll notice that there's only one joint -- your knuckle, there's only one knuckle
but there's a joint at the base of it which is just what I'm going to call this, right, your base
circle, and then for each joint of your thumb, right, I kind of draw them as beans. So I got one, I got
two. Right, I draw them as beans. It's the same for each finger, but the thumb tends to be the thickest.
So the base of this finger, again, bean. This one's a little bit taller, two bean, this one's about the same
height, three bean, pinky is the shortest, four bean. And then I just continue to add on the beans, right?
Next bean, and then obviously our final joint will be the shortest bean, right? But the number one thing we
want to keep in mind every single time, is to make sure that all of the different lengths are still
according to this one. Right? This finger should be the longest, these two should be approximately
the same length, and this should be the smallest one. But now you can kind of erase the insides.
Always draw in your nails! Your nails are what will make sure that your fingers are in perspective!
Right, so of course they're round and your nails will curve to fit the shape of those sausages.
Right? And they'll help reinforce your perspective for each finger. They're a little bit flatter than
like a regular cylinder, but they will curve around the shape of your fingers.
So how I was taught, technically in college, how to draw the planes of the hands was with
rectangular prisms, so instead of that flask shape for the plane of the hand, we were given these kind
of rectangular prisms to work with for the base. Split this up into four different sections, so this
would be angled a little bit more. All right...so each each finger then, instead of drawing them as
the beans that I drew them as, you would draw them as rectangular prisms same heights though.
No matter which technique you are using, it is the same lengths. I find this one a little bit
trickier to use, but it works just the same. This one works a little bit better if you're struggling
with the perspective of your fingers, because now you have like very concrete shapes to work with,
right, so now it's like you're breaking it up into different blocks, like building blocks almost.
This is beans, this is French Fries! How I've also seen it done
is just...just with the shapes, right, some people tend to draw all their fingers it's kind of a mix
between what I...like my technique and the geometric technique, so yeah drawing every single joint,
more as rectangles. Let's talk about different ages right baby hands let's talk about baby hands. Baby
hands are quite easy -- start with a circle, and then just one bean one bean for each finger.
Right? Baby hands are very squishy. Of course they have joints, but they're very very tiny. You can
use this exact same technique for chibis. The lengths are exactly the same, so now
your middle finger should be your tallest, then these two should be approximately the same length,
and then your pinky should be the shortest. Baby hands are very very small very very cute.
It's the same thing if you're drawing, like, a fist, right, each of the little joints.
So you can draw a lot of their joints as just very round jelly beans. So let's go over elders. When it
comes to drawing anything elderly, right, the skin gets pulled very taut against their hands. I'm
gonna draw this hand from the back as well, just so you can kind of see the difference a little bit.
Right, so I like to elongate the plane of the hands. I'm going to draw the back of the hand first,
and then I'll draw the palm a little bit more. When I draw each joint now, it's like very very thin.
Extra bits...when you have your wrist as well, when you're drawing your hand, look
at your wrist for a second -- look at it on its side. You'll notice there's a little bump on your wrist,
right, if you have your wrist your hand goes a little bit down like this. I tend to exaggerate it.
Your hand goes a little bit down like that. Right, this is your wrist bone. Your arm does
not go perfectly in line with your hand, that's far too flat. Never forget your wrist bone. Your wrist
bone is always there, you should always include it! Same with your wrist creases, if you take your
hand now and fold it downwards so it kind of makes an L with your arm, like downwards, you'll
notice that there is now some skin creases there, and you want to include those too. Take
your hand and make a ball it into a fist, you'll notice that your knuckles get very pronounced,
and if you kind of touch the back of your hand, you can feel those joints going towards your wrist,
right, with elders you can really pronounce that out some more, right? With...the older you get the
more extreme this gets. Same with um very masculine hands tend to be A) little bit more veiny,
B) they tend to show these kind of tendons more.
You can also exaggerate your joints a little bit more when they're elderly. All right, so really
add on more of those knuckles and knuckle creases. Every section of your body will age with you, right,
you don't want to be drawing perfectly young hands on an elder. Right, you can add on some spots.
Now monster hands -- that's a very broad term, because there are lots of different monsters that you can
draw, right? For me though, if we're doing horror hands, very very similar to elders hands, right,
but monster hands are really fun because you can kind of mess around with the anatomy more. You can
really really exaggerate anatomy more, and you can kind of disregard a lot of things that you
know about hands. One of my favorite things is to add on an extra joint and to add on an extra finger.
Right, so make the joints very very long, adding an extra...extra finger, stuff like that.
The number one thing if you're drawing any kind of hand though, is to start off with the base of
the finger and kind of mark off where those go, and then my nails...which I'm gonna make very long.
Another rule of horror, um, is flat fingernails tend to be a little bit freakier than sharp fingernails.
with your nails your nails will always tend to curve downwards, and they also
tend to curl--like, curve inwards. Right so if you have your...your finger, right, they tend to
curve a little bit downwards. And also curve inwards like that. Depending on the person
their nail...your nail might curve more your nail might curve less. Nails curve! And of
course, this is just kind of my favorite way to do monster hands, there're lots of different monster hands.
But yeah, and if you didn't know, our growing community is filled with tons of art nerds,
and we art nerds have to stick together! Be sure to check out the links to our social
media in the description below, and check out our website for our class offerings, because
we're not just a YouTube channel -- we are an art school too! Okay, so, I've kind of gone over
a lot of different basics, [laughs] um, of hands, so let's get into the
fun section now. So this one has all of the fingers pointing directly at us,
and this is one of those poses where...you're gonna really want to pay attention to your 3d forms.
So I'm really looking at that. And this time, I'm really going to draw every single segment of my
finger. There is a little bit of space between each finger, but you notice how every single
curve of every single joint I am keeping the same curve, like I'm keeping the same amount of curve.
Especially with foreshortening, you really want to intensify the shape of the forms that you're using.
So my thumb is pointing downwards...I would actually draw in the full pen first.
and this is where your...your nails will really come in handy.
Your nails can kind of act as indicators for where your fingers are pressing down or not, so
they'll most likely be curved downwards to match the finger bending if they are playing the key.
But generally, when it comes to holding a sword... so first of all, you want to draw in the actual
pole or the sword hilt yourself first, um, so your hand has a guide. Say if it's like a
big big sword, right, dual handed sword, right, you want your wrists to be quite straight.
Right, so your thumb will go kind of on top. Also when you're drawing
something where it's grasping something else, you want your entire hand to be drawn...
around it, right? Even if you can't see the palm while you're holding the sword, draw it in anyway so you
have a reference point for where it would go. This is me bringing back the beans, so you've noticed
I've been drawing a lot of the rectangles for all of these poses, but I'm bringing back the beans
for this one. Depending on how strong your grip is as well you want to accentuate your knuckles,
right, whenever they say it's a white knuckled grasp, it means that the knuckles...
well, they turn white, because they're grasping it super super hard.
Let's start with the thumb...
yeah...then with this one. If it's a little bit stronger -- a little stronger of a grip, then
you're going to want to accentuate the knuckles that pop up as well.
Especially with your wrist, um, if you're holding something very tightly, your wrist
joint is really going to pop out because you're...you're causing tension. Stuff like that,
this is kind of how you would hold them.
With the fist, I tend to start with my own...with the thumb, if I've clenched it inwards like this.
Right, so my thumb -- the thumb tends to go over everything, right, and you can kind of draw each
little clenched finger as a rectangle, but they will be going down in a slant. They shouldn't be
perfectly straight across, right? They should be going downwards in a slant because each
finger gets a little bit smaller. Right, and they all kind of angle inwards just slightly.
When your hands are clenched it's also very... this middle...like...thing is very very pronounced.
Especially because the hand is clenched, it's going to be
quite pronounced, so you want to keep that in there.
If you're wondering what this line is that I'm drawing every single time, it's a tendon that
comes down onto your wrist, you can kind of...some people have it some people don't. I'll show you the
way that I hold a book, also do the hand on the outside as well so this is going to be another
back of the hand drawing, just like anything that has a prop, most of the time if the prop is...if the
prop is bigger than the hand, then draw the prop first and then draw the hand. So the thumb is going
to be on the inside, so you don't actually have to draw it completely, just maybe a little hint of it.
For me, I like to have two of my fingers
on one side of the book, and then the other two fingers on the other side of the book.
Keep the curves of your fingers in mind, because this is a little
bit foreshortened. It's not crazy crazy but it is a little bit foreshortened.
So again, nails, very very important. In doing that -- and the hand is a little bit
stressed, so you're gonna want the knuckles in there when you draw them. And the thumb
won't really be visible because it will be covered by the book itself
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