Now for the highly dreaded hand. It's really hard to get the hand right at first because of its weird shape and how articulate it is; however, this tutorial will walk you through the different steps and hopefully show you that drawing hands is not as hard as it seems.
People often end up drawing strange hands because they try to draw the entire shape at once instead of breaking it down into different shapes and using guidelines. (Yes, once again, guidelines come in handy). Take a look at your hand. Notice how there are really 3 different components to it? A palm, a thumb that sticks out one way, and four fingers that stick out in another direction. When drawing, it's helpful to think of these components as being separate (ie. as entities that move independently from each other) rather than as one single body part.
There are many ways to do the guidelines. I am only going to teach you how I do them, but you can do whatever feels right to you. To start, draw a circle for the wrist and a trapezoid on top of it for the palm. No matter what kind of movement your hand makes, the palm generally does not lose this shape.
Next, draw an up-side-down triangle attached on the side of the trapezoid for the thumb. Why a triangle? Because the actual muscles that move the thumb are triangular as well. If you use triangular guidelines to mimick them, you'll be able to mimick the ranges of motions they can do as well.
At the top of the trapezoid, you can draw four small circles for each knuckle. This step is helpful in making sure that each finger is spread out evenly across the hand. It also reminds you of how wide you should draw each finger.
Next, draw lines for the fingers (3 separate segments for the three bones of each finger, or one line if the finger is straight). You can draw circles for the two joints in each finger, but I find that to be rather messy so I never do. The lines will give you a preview of the general position your hand will assume. Usually, you can tell at this point if your hand is going to look weird or not. If it does, you can easily correct each of the three components by changing the direction they're pointing in, or their length.
How do you know what kind of position the hand should take? The best way is to try it on yourself. If you want to draw a specific pose, act it out and look at what your hands are doing. Then, try to draw it out on paper.
Once you are satisfied with how they look, you can proceed by adding the flesh. While fingers are indeed cylindrical in shape, drawing only basic cylinders will make your fingers look very blocky. Look at your fingers. Notice how the bottom the slightly wider than the top? How the tips are rounded, and how each as a pulp (a little bulge) at the end. The best way to make your hands look as natural as possible is to once again, use your own hand as reference.
Drawing hands from different perspectives involve more or less the same steps. The steps for drawing a side-view hand are shown below.
Three very important points to remember:
Thumb has two joints whereas the other four fingers have three.
The thumb is always lateral to the body (pointing outwards) with the palm facing up and medial to the body (pointing inwards) with the palm facing down. Many people often draw thumbs on the wrong side so it's important to double check every time.
You can't normally move your furthest finger bone (distal phalanges) without moving your middle finger bones (intermediate phalanges). Thus, if you want your finger tips to point downwards, you need to keep in mind that the middle part will be moving as well no matter what.
IMPORTANT: From today on, you are forbidden to draw characters with hands behind their backs unless absolutely required (eg. your character is pacing around, handcuffed, etc). You won't be able to practice if you keep on hiding them behind bodies (also, it's just a really awkward pose overall). They might look a bit off at first, but just keep trying and you'll definitely get it after a while.
